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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



DDDn531757 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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MGiAm OF TORTI-IINE 



SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PLAINS AND THE DIGGINGS 



BY 



DAVID ROHRER LEEPER 



illustrated 

By O. Marion Elbel, from Selections and Suggestions 

BY the Author 



'Golden day8, remembered days, 
The days of 'Forty-Nine" 




/-TTfp' 



SOUTH BEND. INDIANA 

J. B. 8TOLL & COMPANY, PRINTERS 
1894 



K 



CJopyrig-ht, 1894 and 1895, 

By DAVID ROHRER LEEPER. 

All rights rese^-ved. 



IBX^XS.i&.'Z'.^. 



Page 13, bottom line, for "sixty" read "'twenty-two" or "sixty men." 
Page 45, line 11 from bottom, for "Headpath's" read "Hudspeth's." 
Page 59, line 1 of foot-note, for "Pike" read "Posey." 






TttE ARGONAUTS OF FORTY-NINE. 



I. 



HO, FOR THE SACRAMENTO ! 




N FEBRUARY 22, 1849, our 
little party of six set out from 
South Bend, Indiana, for the 



newly discovered gold-fields 



i 

lp^^\>^f*^rr"g||| of California. The members 

Ip^.^ ' ~ ' ' •''^^v^^^f f / ^^^ ^^^'^ P^^'ty were William S 
\}m-^ '^i^J^-^lll Good, Michael Donahue, 

Thomas Rockhill, William L. 
Earl, Thomas Dudley Neal, 
and the writer (David R. 
Leeper). . All were young — the oldest twenty-five, 
the youngest seventeen. Our equipment consisted of 
two wagons, seven yoke of oxen, and two years' sup- 
plies. The long journey before us, the comparatively 
unknown region through which it lay, and the glamour 
of the object for which it was undertaken, lent our ad- 
venture considerable local interest, so that many- 
friends and spectators were present to witness our de- 
parture, our two covered wagons being objects of much 
curious concern as they rolled out Washington street, 
with their three thousand miles chiefl}' of wilderness 
before them. But for us the occasion had few pangs. 
The diggings had been discovered but a twelvemonth 
before, and the glowing tales of their marvellous rich- 



4 A BIT OF RETROSPECT. 

ness were on every tongue. Our enthusiasm was 
wrought up to the highest piteh, while the hardships 
and perils likely to be incident to such a journey were 
given scarcely a passing thought. Several parties of 
our acquaintance had already gone, and others were 
preparing to go, which still further intensified our 
eagerness. It was therefore with light hearts, and per- 
haps lighter heads, that we lustily joined in the chorus 
of the inspiring parod}' of the time: 

"Oh, California! 
That's the land for me; 

I'm going to Sacramento 
With tny washbowl on my knee." 

The West was still very new. Even Chicago had 
not heard the whistle of the locomotive. Illinois, 
Iowa and Missouri were, for the most part, an un- 
broken prairie expanse, with not infrequentl}' ten to 
twenty miles between the nearest settlers. The coo- 
ing of myriads of prairie chickens tilled the morning 
air like the roar of a distant waterfall, and the prairies 
were strewn over with the antlers of the deer and elk, 
attesting the abundance also of this more pretentious 
species of game. Westward of Iowa and Missouri, 
that vast area of mountain and plain stretching away 
to where the surf-beat of the Pacific laves the golden 
shore, was laid down on the maps as terra incognita. 
Except at three or four isolated spots, where a mis- 
sion or a military post had been located, not an abode 
of the white man was to be seen from the Missouri 
River to the Sacramento. True, the Later Da}" 
Saints, wandering about in search of the Hoi}- Land, 
like the Israelites of old, had dropped down by the 
Great Salt Lake two years before, but the bulk of 




«-vr?l I ■! /; 



6 NOT A HOLIDAY JUNKET. 

gold-seekers went on other roads, and were therefore 
not permitted to feast eyes on the few mud huts that 
then adorned this newly adopted land of promise. 

We were not long in finding out that the adven- 
ture meant something more than poetry and romance. 
We left home in the midst of a thaw, and from the 
very start were beset with the mud, slush and flood 
incident to the breaking up of winter. Especially 
upon the murky prairies, of which we saw little else 
till we reached the frontier, the roads were wretched 
in the extreme. Several of the parties from South 
Bend drove their teams only as far as the Mississippi 
River, where, wearied of their tedious progress, they 
shipped their wagons and goods by boat to their in- 
tended point of departure on the frontier, driving 
their teams thence loose across the countr}'. Our 
party, however, braved it through overland from be- 
ginning to end. Nor did we indeed have much choice 
in the matter, for it so happened that we were out 
from home bvit a few days when all the hard cash in 
our compan3''s exchequer mysteriously took wing. 
We were frequently compelled to make wide detours, 
avoiding the roads altogether, so as to escape the 
floods and bottomless lowlands. Many of the streams 
were out of their banks, and the bridges ( if there had 
been any) were washed away. At LaSalle, Illinois, 
we were water-bound for a week or more by the 
swollen Little Vermillion Creek. We made an effort 
to cross by swimming a yoke of oxen over and at- 
taching a line from them to a wagon on the opposite 
bank. The wagon made the passage well enough; 




NOT A nOT.IDAY JUNKET. 7 

but it had not occurred to us to lash down the box, 
and the vehicle had scarcely reached the current when 

the box lifted from its 
plnce, and dashed away on 
the foaming torrent as 
gail}' as if on a holida}' 
jaunt. Luckily, the jolly 
craft lodged at the aque- 
duct of the canal several 
miles below, and was thus 
prexented from being lost 
in the Illinois Ri\er, which 
was rushing by at flood- 
stage. Our goods had 
been removed from the 
box before we made the 
experiment. We tinally, as a last resort, were com- 
pelled to swim our oxen across, drag our wagons 
through the aqueduct, 
and carry our luggage 
over on the heel-path, the 
toe-path being on the op- 
posite side. At Burling- 
ton, Iowa, we had a sim- 
ilar detention. The bot- 
toms of the Mississippi 
were inundated for miles, 
and ferriage for a t i m e 
was wholh' suspended. 
When tinall}' we were 
enabled to make the pas- 



WILLIAM S. GOOD. 
(FROM A DAGl'ERREOTVPE, 1S52.) 




WILLIAM L. BARL. 
(FKOM AN OLD PHOTOGRAPH.) 



8 DRIVING DULL CARE AWAY. 

sage, it was on board a rickety scow propelled b}' a 
horse treadmill, the distance between the landings on 
the opposite sides being seven miles. The current 
was against us at that, but a tortuous slough through 
a timbered bottom very much facilitated our progress. 
Added to the difficulties of travel, were the inconven- 
iences suffered from the scantiness of accommodations 
for ourselves and animals incident to the newness and 
sparseness of the settlements. More than once we 
could obtain no accommodations at all. I remember 
that on one such occasion in Missouri, when after 
trudging all day long through the mud, night over- 
took us in the middle of a wide prairie. We had no 
alternative but to chain our oxen to the wheels of our 
wagons, make our couches beneath the wagon covers 
as best we could, having no fire and no food for man 
or beast. As I lay upon that rude pallet reflecting on 
the situation, the winds meantime keeping up an om- 
inous refrain without, my thoughts naturally turned 
toward home, its blazing chimney-fire, its generous 
cupboard, and its other creature comforts. Onl}' on 
one other occasion was I touched with homesickness 
during my five years' absence on that ad\'enture. That 
was on receipt of my flrst letter from home, after an 
absence of two and a half years. We fared decidedly 
better after we had left all traces of civilization behind. 
Then the roads were easier; we carried our own food; 
and our animals subsisted on the native pastures. 

But the irksomeness of this part of the journey was 
somewhat relieved by the naturally buo3'ant proclivi- 
ties of most of the party. A little beyond Joliet, Illi- 



DRIVING DULI> CARE EWAY 




nois, our numbers were ;ui<;-mentcd by ;i part}' of South 
Benders about the size of ours. Thus reeruited, we 

were able to muster sev- 



eral musical instruments 
— \ iolin, banjo, tambour- 
ine and castanets. We 
were all vocal virtuosos 
from the backwoods con- 
servatories, and our re- 
pertoire was ampl}' equip- 
ped with the popular 
plantation melodies of the 
day. If our music was 
not exactly such as "e'en 
listening angels'' would 
"lean to hear," we were 
nevertheless enabled in this manner to while away 
many an evening by our camp-fires, which otherwise 
would have dragged 
heavil}' on our hands. In 
fact, our musical prepos- 
sessions were so pro- 
nounced that our fame 
spread far and near along 
our route, and won us the 
reputation of being the 
wildest and joUiest lot of 
Hoosiers ever let loose 
outside the hoop-pole and 
pumpkin state. Out on 

4-U .^1 ,■„ i- 4.\ UAVID R. LEEPEK. 

the plains, too, there was (,,^,,, ^ photogkaph. i89t.) 



THOMAS ROCKHILL. 
(from a photograph, 1881.) 




td A TOUCH OF THE LUDICROUS. 

plenty of company. We were scarcely ever out of 
sight of other emigrants like ourselves, and our camps 
were often great villages, which were generally en- 
livened with music and dancing or some other sorts of 
amusements. 

It must be owned, however, that camp experience 
was by no means conducive to exuberance of spirit or 
sweetness of temper. In fact, it was a matter of com- 
mon remark that men were decidedl}^ more irascible 
on the plains than they had been at home, and this 
perverseness not infrequently culminated in hot words 
and sometimes in blows. The tilts thus occasioned 
were made the theme of man}- comic songs out on the 
plains. Our first experience of the kind occurred at 
our encampment on the Mississippi, where we were 
awaiting ferriage. On this occasion, the chef de cui- 
sine then on duty, had arranged a convenient seat for 
himself when preparing the meal, and it was noticed 
that he had not been altogether self-abnegating in ap- 
portioning the dried-apple sauce among the several 
plates. He had, in fact, served the delicacy in decid- 
edly less stinted measure to himself than to the others. 
One of the other members of the mess, observing this, 
did not propose to brook the offense, and with words, 
looks and gestures betokening blows brushed the of- 
fender as'ide and seated himself at the fa\ored plate. 
Trifling as this affair was, the particijants were never 
friends afterward. 

Good and Earl sported better clothes than their 
companions. On starting upon the journey, the one 
wore a silk hat and the other a swallowtail coat. The 




GOUl> MINING WITH KOCKKR AND LUNG-TOM IN "FOKTYMNE. 



12 



ON THE BORDER. 



hat soon became badly battered, and at the mid-prai- 
rie encampment, mentioned on another page, one of the 
sleeves of the coat worked down between the wagon 
cover and the wagon box within reach of the oxen 
chained to the wheel and was chewed into pulp up to 
the elbow. Earl, well knowing how his companions 
relished the mishap, continued out of spite to wear the 
garment as before. At one of our encampments 
shortl}^ after, one of our many visitors from the neigh- 
borhood was a rustic who was soon to be married, 
He was readily persuaded that the hat and coat could 
be made to answer for a part of his wedding suit. 

For a trifle, he was told, 
he could have the articles 
restored as good as new in 
St. Joseph, which was some 
thirty to forty miles distant. 
An exchange for a good 
rifle was quickly consum- 
mated. The weapon was 
thought to be a valuable ac- 
quisition, for mine had dis- 
appeared earl}' on the jour- 
ney, and we felt that surel}' we must be armed to the 
teeth after crossing the border. 

St. Joseph, Missouri, was our objective point on the 
frontier. We found this border city — the last outpost 
of civilization — thronged with gold-seekers like our- 
selves. The}' had flocked hither from every quarter 
to flt out for the overland journey. Many had pushed 
out before our arrival; man}- were still coming in; and 




JUST TUB THING. 



ADIKl' I'O CINllJZATION. I^ 

all was liLirry-scurry with excitement. The only trans- 
portation available for crossing the Missouri River 
w^as a big- clumsy scow or tiat-hoat proix'llcd In* long 
oars or sweeps. We chartered this craft for one night, 
several parties clubbing w^ith us for the purpose. The 
price stipulated was ninety dollars, we to perform the 
labor. The task was b}- no means a holida}' diver- 
sion. I tugged at the end of one of those sweeps m}^- 
self all night, and it seemed a long, long night, indeed. 
The Big Mudd}' was booming from the spring fresh- 
ets, and at this point hurled its entire volume sheer 
against a precipitous bluff just above the ferrying- 
place, thus lashing its waters, ordinarily very violent, 
into redoubled fur). But w^e were equal to the emer- 
gency, and succeeded in placing the turbulent flood 
behind not only ourselves, but also enough others ful- 
1}' to idemnif}' us for our outlay. ^ 

On May i6, we pulled out from the Missouri River 
through the muddy timbered bottom to the open bluffs. 
We had now, sure enough, bid adieu to civilization. 
The wild beast and the sportive, hair-lifting savage 
rose up in grim visions before us, as the fancy painted 
forth the haunts of the cheerless solitude. Over two 
thousand miles of this sort of forbidding prospect la}' 
before us. A strong force and a rigid discipline were 
ver}' natunilh' conccixed of as the imperatixe needs of 
the hour. Many emigrants — as we were all denomi- 
nated at that time — were encamped about us, and all 
were impressed with a like portentous sense of the sit- 
uation. We were, therefore, not long in marshaling 
a train of some si.\t\' wagons, duh' ecpiiiipcd with of- 



14 THE BEST LAID SCHEMES. 

ficers and a bristling code of rules. Guards were to 
pace their beats regularly of nights, and the stock was 
all to be carefully corralled by arranging the wagons 
in the form of an enclosure for this purpose. Johnson 
Ilorrell, who was for many years a conspicuous figure 
in the history of South Bend, was given the chief com- 
mand. As we pushed out from the ri\er bluffs into 
the open country beyond, our long line of "prairie 
schooners''' looked sightly indeed, as it gracefuU}- 
wound itself over the green, billowy landscape, 

"Stretching in airy undulations far away." 

But, as we soon found out, our "thing of beauty''^ 
was not to be "a joy forever."" It was ordered, among 
other regulations, that the teams retain permanently 
the order in which they had fallen into line on the 
first day, only that the procession should be operated 
as a sort of endless chain, each team in its turn occu- 
pying the lead one day and dropping to the rear the 
next day. Nothing could appear fairer or more im- 
partial than this arrangement. Yet, the spirit of re- 
volt was alive and imminent. The driver — James 
McCartney, a resolute South Bender — who enjoyed 
the post of honor on the tirst da}', insisted on retaining 
the same position on the next day, and he did, in spite 
of all expostulations and peremptor}- commands to the 
contrary. A court martial was ordered; but the re- 
calcitrant was inexorable. lie simpl}' scouted the au- 
thorit}' of that grave tribunal, and thereafter drove 
and encamped at a con\enient distance from the main 
body, thus largel}^ profiting b}- the supposed advan- 






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;> ^'^fl-' % A- -^l : 




1 6 RECKLESS ABANDONMENT OF PROPERTY. 

tages of the organization, while wholly relieved of its 
duties and inconveniences. 

I may here relate a trifling incident illustrative of a 
conspicuous feature of the plains that season. We had 
not been out many da}S beyond the confines of ci\ili- 
zation, when, in a stroll some distance from* the train, 
I discovered a good w^agon tire. Such reckless aban- 
donment of property was something new to me. I 

rolled 
the val- 
u a b 1 e 




a 1 o n ij 



^ for a while, striving vig- 
orously to reach the 
moving train with it, 
but had at last to abandon the effort in despair. From 
about this time onward, we saw castaway articles 
strewn b\- the roadside one after another in increasing 
profusion till we could have taken our choice of the 
best of wagons entire wnth much of their lading, had 
we been provided with the extra teams to draw them. 
Some of the draft animals perished, some stampeded, 
and all became more or less jaded and foot-worn. One 
train, from Columbus, Ohio, lost every animal it had 
through that inexplicable fright known as stampede. 
Hence the means for transportation became inade- 
quate thus early on the journey, and were ever}' day 
becoming more and more reduced. Many of the em- 
igrants had provided enough supplies to last thein a 
year or two; but they were not long in seeing the pro- 



l8 OUR DISSOLVING PAGEANT. 

prietv, if not the actual necessity, of reducing their 
lading as much as possible, with the view both of re- 
lieving their teams and facilitating their progress. 
Even the wagon boxes were in many cases shortened, 
and tons upon tons of bacon and other articles of the 
outfits were converted into fuel, the main purpose be- 
ing to favor the teams. 

Fuel was quite an object through that part of the 
route now known as Nebraska and Eastern Wyoming. 
On the lower part of the main Platte, the situation 
as to wood was somewhat like that described in the 
Grecian fable as to water: 

"So bends tormented Tantalus to drink, 

While from his lips the refluent waters shrink; 

Again the rising stream his bosom laves. 

And thirst consumes him 'mid circumfluent waves." 

For a number of days, a heavy belt of cottonwoods 
was temptingly near at hand; but not in a single in- 
stance were we able to reach a trunk, limb, or twig 
because of an intervening section of the river. Weeds 
and buffalo "chips'' (bois de vache) were about our 
only resource, and the latter, I may sa}', made an ex- 
cellent fuel when it could be had. To husband as 
much as possible the scanty suppl}- of such fuel as was 
obtainable, we improvised a sort of furnace by cutting 
a narrow trench in the sod so that the coffee-pot and 
frying-pan would span the breadth of the lire and rest 
upon the walls of the opening. Coffee, flapjacks and 
bacon were about the only articles we had to prepare, 
and in the turning or "flipping" of the flapjacks, espe 
cially, we soon became \ery expert. 

As to our grand caravan, it steadily came to grief. 
The inexpediency of tra\eling in so large a body be- 



OUR DISSOLVING PAGEANT. I9 

came more and more manifest as we approached the 
mountains, and the rough roads and difficult passages 
delayed progress b}' the necessity of one team having 
to wait on another, especially where the doubling of 
teams was required. Other influences tended to the 
same end. As we became accustomed to the plains, 
our wariness from visions of the tomahawk and the 
scalping-knife gradually wore away into stolid indif- 
ference, so that we cared nothing for the security that 
numbers might afford. I carried no arms, yet often 
wandered miles awa}' from the train alone as this or 
that object might happen to attract my attention. 
The parching winds and stifling dust, with the boun- 
tifully blotched and blistered lips that afflicted nearly 
every one in consequence, did not at all conduce to 
that geniality of temper that would incline men to so- 
cial solace. Besides, on the earlier part of the route, 
there was much sickness, and many deaths occurred, 
which occasioned annoyances and delays irksome to 
those not immediately interested. It is not very 
strange, therefore, that, with all these dismembering 
tendencies at work, our once imposing pageant should 
ha\ e so ingloriously faded that before we had fairly 
reached the mountains it had passed into "innocuous 
desuetude.''' Even our own little party underwent 
depletions from time to time until but three members 
of the original six remained. These three traveled 
and camped alone for many days, with the utmost un- 
concern as to whether anvbodv else was far or near. 
As for keeping watch, all thought of that had vanish- 
ed before we had proceeded a quarter of our way. 



20 A SIOUX VILLAGE. 

Tents, too, were early abandoned as useless luxuries, 
and each individual when retiring for the night, sought 
out the most eligible site he could find ( usually among 
the sage-brush), and rolling himself up in his blankets 
and buffalo robes thus committed himself to the "sweet 
restorer,'^ with only the starry canopy for a shelter; — ^ 

"Weariness 
Can snore upon the flint, when rusty sl*th 
Finds the downy pillow hard." 

In connection with the matter of guard duty, a lit- 
tle digression here in the way of a personal allusion 
ma}' be excusable. The occurrence happened while 
some pretense of numbers and military formalities was 
still affected. My guard-shift came on at midnight. 
It was alleged that I failed to respond to the call of 
the sentinel whom I was to relieve. It was at the 
time raining and blustering forbiddingly without. It 
was much more inviting beneath the protecting wagon 
sheets than out upon the bleak, howling plain. Hence 
the presumption of guilt lay manifestly against me, 
and I was promptly arraigned and tried on the charge. 
A witty and brilliant attorney from Columbus, Ohio, 
volunteered to defend me. The counsel laid much 
stress on my unsophisticated make-up, and thus in a 
serio-comic vein affected to appeal to the sympathy of 
the court. But the court nevertheless remained in- 
exorable, and a double stent of guard duty was the 
finding. Whether or not that judgment was ever car- 
ried into effect, is a matter that does not appear of 
record. 

Near where we forded the South Platte we had the 



1 Sec "Moonlight camp scene on the Humboldt," on page 52. 



22 THE SCARCITY OF GAME. 

good fortune to come upon a large village of the Sioux 
which was squatted temporarily in the locality. These 
Indians struck me as being dejjidedly comely speci- 
mens of their race — neat, healthy, self-poised. Their 
dress was made chiefly of white-tanned skins, and 
looked very picturesque in its elaborate decorations of 
beadwork and other fanciful adornments peculiar to 
savagery. I had the honor of being one of a party 
that called upon the chief in his tepee, and of exchang- 
ing whiffs of the pipe of peace with that "much heap 
big Ingin." Our dignihed host at once bespoke our 
confidence by his gracious assurance that the Sioux 
had never shed the blood of the pale-face. During the 
whole of the ceremony, one of the attaches of his royal 
muckamuck regaled us with a half-gutteral, half-nasal 
chant, to which he marked time with the swing of the 
rattle. 

Game was bv no means as plentiful as one would 
ha^'e supposed. We found more of it in the states 
through which we passed than in the country beyond. 
In the region now known as Nebraska many ante- 
lopes were seen bounding over the plain or watch- 
ing our movements from elevated points; but they 
were shy, vigilant, and hard to capture. In the moun- 
tains, deer and mountain sheep {ovis montana) were 
occasionally sighted and brought dow^n, and when we 
struck the magnificent pasture ranges of California, 
deer, elk, antelope and bear abounded. At the "Big 
Meadows, '' on Feather River, where we lay by se^"eral 
days to recruit our oxen, Neal brought in se\en black- 
tail deer in one da}-. I was out at the same time 







l,''/''l- 



/ f 




24 THE SCARCITY OF GAME, 

equally eager on the chase, but the game did not ap- 
pear at all enamored of my presence, so I had my am- 
munition for my pains. But, on the whole, our ban- 
quets on the luxuries of the chase were few and far 
between. Strange to say, we saw but few buffaloes 
(properly bison), not more than a dozen or so, all told. 
Those few we saw near where we forded the South 
Platte.^ A spirited chase was being given the tempt- 
ing stragglers, and this within plain view of our mov- 
ing caravan. The spectacle was rendered none the 
less inspiring from the circumstance that a lad^' mount- 
ed on a fleet steed was one of the party making the 
pursuit. 

1 The w^riter ^'as privileged, nearly thirtj' years later, ^vhen steaming 
down the Missouri River through the Bad Lands, to witness those noble 
beasts in their \vonted glory. It was in August, and they were on their 
northward run. The steamer w^as several days in passing through their scat- 
tered bands, gr' ups of which were well-nigh constantly in sight Several 
times the boat ran over clumps of them, as they were swimming the river. 
At one point we came upon perhaps thirty to forty of them, where they were 
confined on a narrow sand spit between the river and a high vertical bluff. 
The frightened animals took to the water, and a part of them became mired 
in a mud bank on the oiiposite side, where the captain ran the steamer upon 
them and sixteen were wantonly slaughtered. Squads of the passengers kept 
up a constant fusilade among the poor brutes from the hurricane deck, as the 
steamer was passing through their lines, killing and maiming many — all. too, 
with rifles and ammunition furnished the boat by the Government for de- 
fense against hostile Indians. 




II. 

A CHANGE OF 5GENE— TflE ARID REGION. 



WE forded the South Fork of the Platte. It was, 
at our phice of crossing, a broad, shallow 
stream, with a treacherous quicksand bot- 
tom. The accompanying cut presents a typical scene 
of the fording. From this branch of the Platte, our 
trail lay over a high, open, rolling country, via Ash 
Hollow, for a distance of about hfty miles, to the North 
Fork of the Platte. We then followed the course of 
the latter stream some three hundred miles. The 
country now graduall}- increased in ruggedness, thus 
heralding our approach toward the Rocky Mountains. 
The cliffs and highlands along the Platte became ob- 
jects of special interest. These cliffs, being composed 
of horizontal strata of different degrees of hardness, 
were in man}- instances wrought into various forms 
which, with a little assistance of the imagination, ap- 
peared to be artistic creations, such as churches, cas- 
tles, towers, embattlements, and architectural ruins 
of various sorts. As Washington Irving remarks, one 
could scarcely persuade himself that works of art were 
not here really mingled with the fantastic freaks of 
nature. 

We had now, very evidently, entered upon a land 
different from an}' to which we had ever before been 



A TRNDKR foot's IT.TATSION. 2 7 

accustomed. The presence of the cacti and other 
arid-loN-ino- phmts assured us that we were treading- 
the soil of the so-called Arid Region, which comprises 
a third of the entire country. The villages of the 
prairie dog had become numerous, and the queer an- 
tics of this shy, Nigilant, nimble, barking marmot af- 
forded us much amusement. The stately owl antl the 
lazy rattlesnake were the constant but doubtless un- 
welcome co-partners with the prairie dog in the occu- 
pancy of these \illages. 

The Court House Rock and the Chimney Rock^ 
were among the more conspicuous of these natural 

curiosities, and both were 
"!k^^ visible a considerable dis- 
tance. We took our nooning 
_ ^ nearU' 

i^-'- »- '' '• '■ '-- -^--^^^^^" "^^''' 



THE CHIMNEY EOCK. 

named, which arose before us isolated and in bold re- 
lief out of the bosom of the plain. Ahead, in the di 
rection we were going, the spire of the other was peep- 
ing invitingl}- over the intervening hills. It would be 
easy enough, to all appearances, to step over to the 
Court House, cut across to the Chimnc}-, and reach 
the train by camping time. A party of us according- 

l I thus described this noted landmark in \ 64. when I last saw it: "It 
has a vertical column about seventy feet high, standing upon the apex of a 
conical base of about the same height and about a half mile in its largest cir- 
cumference. A few vears ago the lightning hurled some thirty feet of the 
chimney or spire to the ground, and the winds and the rains are slowly wear 
ing away the remainder. The mass is evidently a detached section of the 
adjacent blufls. and has been configured by the same processes of erosion as 
the formations of which it was once a part." 




ANOTHER ILLUSION. 29 

ly determined upon the undertaking. We were all 
afoot, but the distance appeared so trifling as to give 
us no concern. Well, the upshot of it was, that we 
did not reach the Court House until about sundown. 
We hurriedly carved our names upon its walls; view 
ed for a moment the strange landscape roundabout ; 
gazed down upon tlie crystal waters of a generous 
brook that rippled at its base, and, giving the Chim- 
ney an askance glance, were glad to bear away for 
camp, which we did not make till far in the night. It 
required still two and a half days journeying before 
we stood under the shadow of the Chimney. The ex- 
treme transparency of the atmosphere in this section 
explains the illusory phenomenon. Objects appeared 
but a mile or two away when in reality they were often 
from tive to ten. Even the stars seemed to steal down 
from their wonted depths, and look vastly nearer, 
greater and o^rander as thev set their vigils over us 
for the night. Little wonder, therefore, that such il- 
lusions should have taken the tenderfoot unawares, and 
more than once set him will-o'-the-wisp chasing. 

About fifteen miles above Chimney Rock are Scott's 
Bluffs.^ The high, picturesque escarpments which 
had been occupying our attention for several days here 
fell abruptly into the Platte, necessitating a circuit of 
some thirty miles across the uplands. A cut in the 
face of the cliffs about the width of a common wagon 
road and with perpendicular walls at the entrance three 

1 Irving, in hi» "Captain Bonneville." relates a very pathetic story of one 
Scott in connection with these bluffs. A number of years prior to the period 
in which he was writing (1832», Scott had been taken ill and was abandoned 
by his companions on the Laramie River: "On the ensuing summer these very 
individuals visiting these parts, in company with others, came suddenly upon 



ANOTHER ILLUSION. 



to four hundred feet high, furnished a natural and eas}- 
aseent. Near the summit were an excellent spring 
and an inviting camping ground. A blacksmith had 
here erected a temporar}- shop and was for the time 
industriously plying his trade. Even this rude make- 
shift of a habitation had a refreshing effect upon our 
spirits, as a reminder of the civilization we had left far 
behind. The bluffs, as we first sighted them, treated 
us to a magnificent optical illusion — a striking in- 
stance of the mirage. The Platte seemed to be lifted 
hiuh from its bed and swollen into a mighty fiood 




SCOTT'S BI UFFS — (REDRAWN BY '^^C^ 
PERMIS<5ION FROM THF CEN 
TVK\ 'FOR JULY 1891 ) 

sweepmg the entn-e val- 
ley. Out of this apparent expanse of rushing waters 
the rugged form of the bluffs loomed up in blunted, 

the bleached bones and grinning skull of a human skeleton, which, bj- certain 
signs, tjiey recognized for the remains of Scott. This was sixty long miles 
from the place where they had abandoned him; and it appeared that the 
wretched man had crawled that immense distance before death put an end to 
his miseries. The wild and picturesque bluffs in the neighborhood of his lonely 
grave have ever since borne his name." 



NEARIXG THE ROCKllCS. ^I 

blurred and c.\a<j:i;-cratcd outline, a lia/y, drraniy, 
tremulous atmosphere the while lending- its wen-d-hke 
effeet to the seene. 

We now beo-an to eateh an oeeasional glimpse of 
the outer and hio-her peaks of the Roeky Mountains. 
Laramie's Peak was the first of these to greet us.' in 
a few days more we passed Fort Laramie, where we 
entered the Blaek Hills, so ealled from the daik ap- 
pearanee at a distanee of the serubby eedars eo\ enn,u- 




LARAMIE'S PEAK— REDRAWN BY PERMISSION FROM "THE CENTUKV" 
FOR MARCH. 1891.) 

the region. The road had beeome rougher and the 
soil more parehed; but the change was hailed as a 
welcome relief from the long-continued monotony. 
We had actually growm weary of good roads, and 
sighed for something to shake us up. Another wel- 

1 This peak was the first mountain that any of our immediate imrtv had 
ever seen, and its proportions appeared to us very formidable. 



32 ENTERING THE ROCKIES. 

come change was the abundance of fuel, and the num- 
erous mountain streams of pure cold water. We here 
made our first acquaintance with the artemisia or sage- 
brush, which was thenceforward to be our chief re- 
liance for fuel.^ 

The North Fork of the Platte, from which on leav- 
ing Fort Laramie we had made a detour of eighty 
miles, we crossed on a craft constructed of cottonwood 
dug-outs pinned together, which was purchased and 
sold by those who in turn used it. One of our wag- 
ons was swamped on being run aboard the contriv- 
ance, but the lading being chiefly flour little damage 
Was done. 

At the Red Buttes, we took final leave of the Platte, 
which had so long borne us company. It was still a 
considerable stream, being several hundred yards wide, 
with a deep and rapid current. An enterprising Mor- 
mon had located a current ferry-boat at this point, 
which proved a ver}- profitable investment. Two 
days more took us to the Sweetwater, a clear, rapid 
tributary of the Platte, four feet deep and twenty 
vards wide. We were now upon the immediate con- 
tines of the Rocky Mountains proper. From the ap- 
pearance of the specimens before us, the name "Rock}'"'^ 
seemed to have been readilv enough suggested, for 
the entire mass in sight was of primitive rock wholly 
bare, and destitute of vegetation except here and there 
where a friendly crevice or indentation yielded a scanty 
and precarious sustenance to a few stunted trees or 

1 This shrub occasionally grows six to eight feet in height, but generally 
only from one to two feet. It emits, especially when crushed, a strong worm, 
wood odor, which from its almost constant presence becarne very obnoxious. 




THE BIG-HOEN AT H03HE.— ADAPTED BY PERMISSION FROM ROOSEVELT's "THE HUNTING 

TRIPS OF A RANf'HMAN," G. P. PUTNAM's SONS, PUBLISHERS, 

NEW VORK AND LONDON. 



THIC rNDICIMCNDRNrCE ROCr<. 3c; 

shrubs. The siij^ns of disintegration, too, were on all 
sides sti-ikin<;-ly manifest. The Iiuoe bodies in plaee 
were rent into ti-a^nients from base to summit, and 
were _i;-round off and furrowed out as onl\- Nature's 
ao-eneies eould ha\ e fashioned them during long- gco- 
logie time. The immense bloeks, some of them aeres 
in extent, had a})parently been wrenched from the 
original ledges antl strewn roundabout, as if some 
maddened Titan had been attempting to tear up the 
foundations of the earth and fling the fragments to the 
winds; — 

"The silken i.arth shuddered, and shrank, and paled; 

The wave sprang up and the mountain quailed. 
I.ook on the hills; let the scars they bear 

Measure the pain of that hour's (iespair." 

Independence Rock is the most noted of these de- 
tached landmarks. Standing immediately by the road- 
side as a sort of sentinel to the mountain flank, it was 
the first of these interesting objects to arrest our at- 
tention. Recent measurements make it one thousand 
fl\e hundred and flfty yards in circumference and one 
hundi-ed and ninety-three feet in height. Its side bor- 
dering the road was literally covered with names and 
dates; as, according to Fremont, it was when he flrst 
saw it, in i<S42. We here celebrated the Fourth of 
July. The young lawyer who earlier had so gal- 
lantly defended me for sleeping on guard made the 
oration. The rock took its name from a similar cel- 
ebration that took place there years before. We 
u ;ed the ri\ er water for camp purposes during our stop- 
ox er for the patriotic exercises. Imagine our chagrin 
and disgust when soon after breaking camp the next 



36 THE DEVIT.''S GATE. 

mornino;, we discovered the putrid carcass of an ox 
steeping in a brook that discharged into the ri\ er a 
short distance above where we had been using the 
water. During the da}' w^e passed the dry beds of a 
number of ponds or lakes that showed heavy depos- 
its of a whitish crystaHzed material that was said to 
be a good quality of common saleratus. We could 
have shoveled up the stuff b}' the wagon-load, but, 
being afraid to use it, did not avail ourselves of the 
opportunity. 

A few miles above Independence Rock is seen an- 
other example of Nature's wonder-making, — the 
DeviPs Gate. This chasm is simph' a crack across 
the end of a granite mountain-spur, thirt3-tive feet 
wide and three hundred ^^ards long, with walls nearly 
vertical and four hundred feet high. Through this 
gorge the Sweetwater forced its wa}', although the 
passage was much obstructed b}- fragments of rock 
which had broken awa}' and tumbled in from above. 
On one of the blocks in the middle of the stream lay 
the remains of a mountain sheep or big-horn. The 
timid creature, whose favorite haunts are such dizz}' 
heights, had probably become frightened, and thus 
taken its death-leap from one of the adjacent cliffs. I 
attempted to pass through the gorge, but my progress 
was soon arrested. Retracing m)^ steps to an eligible 
point, I scaled the spur of the mountain, and at the 
summit observed a dike or cleft about four feet wide 
cutting the wall down to the river. Rounded, igneous 
bowlders suggestive of "hre and brimstone" were 
strewn down the opening, forming an irregular decliv- 



38 THE CONTINENTAL GATEWAY. 

ity to tlic river, as if the oem'tis /ocihac] hurled thcni in 
from the top especially for his convenience in tra\ers- 
ing the premises. The passage being well travel- 
worn, I did not hesitate to undertake the descent. 
Well, after clambering for some distance over the 
rugged rocks, letting myself down se\eral times from 
one projecting bowlder to another, I eventuall}' came 
to a point where it seemed impossible to go either for- 
ward or backward. But, as it turned out, I escaped 
to tell the tale. 

Our course now lav along the valley of the Sweet- 
water for about one hundred miles to the South Pass, 
where we crossed the great divide that separates the 
waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The val- 
Iqv or gateway is from ten to twenty miles wide. The 
siu'face is undulating, occasionalh' mounting into hills, 
and the ascent so gradual that we were scarceh' aw\are 
when the culmination was reached and passed. The 
bottoms were fairlv supplied with grasses; but the up- 
lands were dominated In' the now well-nigh ever-pres- 
ent sage-brush. As we approached tlie sunuuit, we 
obser\ed several patches of snow near the roadside. 
A few^ varieties of wild flowers were blooming close 
b^■ these linp^erino- relics of winter, thus attcstini>' the 
aptitude of Nature to respond to her emironment what- 
e^'er its character. When upon the sunuiu't we were 
seven thousand four hundred and ninet\' feet abo\e 
sea-level, and about one thousand miles from our point 
of departure on the frontier. To the northward in the 
distance the ic}' crests of the sharp, craggy peaks of 
the Wind River ^Mountains were seen ii'litterin<>- in the 



40 LOOKING I^\C'II-^rCWARD. 

sun; while far to the southward great snow\' ranges 
lay, like cloud-billows, sleepy and dim upon the horizon. 
Just beyond the South Pass we encamped at the Pa- 
cific Springs, where for the first time we looked upon 
water flowing Paciticward. The spring nourished a 
beautiful, meadow-like park spread out in gentle 
slopes. The situation was impressive. The great 
Rocky Range lay between us and home; a vast region 
to us a terra incognita, stretched away before us. In 
a less prosaic age, we could readil}' have peopled the 
wild, shadowy realm with all sorts of m3'thical mon- 
sters, as was the wont of the old-time Greek when 
alone musing beside his sea-shore; — 

"At ev«ntide when the shore is dim, 

And bubbling wreaths with the billows swim, 

Thej' rise on the wing of the freshened breeze, 

And flit with the wind o'er the rolling seas." 

The trail at this point diverged, one branch going 
by way of Salt Lake, and the other by way of Bear 
River. We took the latter branch, which was known 
as Sublette's Cut-off. Green River, one of the two 
forks that form the Colorado of the West, was cross- 
ed about seventy miles be3'ond the South Pass. The 
stream was about four hundred feet wide, with a deep 
and violent current. Another Mormon had placed a 
good ferry-boat at this point; so that we had no trouble 
in getting our wagons over. But the water was so 
cold and the current so violent that we consumed a 
whole day in forcing our stock across. Finally, one of 
the party, Swift from Elkhart, mounting a mule, spur- 
red the animal across, and this broke the way for the 
herd to follow. The aspect of the river was barren 



42 THE BEAR RIVER REGION. 

and desolate. Narrow strips of willow, perhaps a 
straggling- cottonwood at wide intervals, and oceasion- 
al patches of grass in the pinched bottoms, made up 
about the sum total of its vegetable life. 

Between Green River and Bear River we crossed a 
divide nearly a thousand feet higher than the South 
Pass. This is the watershed separating the waters of 
the Pacific from those of the Great Basin. We were 
now so far above sea-level that the humid atmosphere 
afforded sustenance to some of the higher forms of 
plant life. Our road led directly through a small 
grove of tamarack, alder, and aspen which crowned one 
of the more favored elevations. This grove was trul}' 
an enchanting spot; at least it so appeared to us after 
our thousand miles of timberless monotony. Comely 
trees and shrubs; bright foliage; refreshing shade; fra- 
grant flowers; pure, cold springs; sparkling rivulets; 
luxuriant grasses ; the chirp and chatter of many birds, — 
such was the scene as my memory now recalls it. It 
seemed indeed like a precious gem plucked from fairy 
land. No weary, parched and sand-beaten traveler 
of Sahara could have been more enraptured upon sight- 
ing an oasis than were we upon entering this cheery, 
sylvan spot. 

The Bear River is the largest tributary of the Great 
Salt Lake, and thus belongs to the water system of 
the Great Basin. The section of the route lying along 
this stream is one of the few of the journey that I now 
recall with pleasurable emotions. The abundance of 
good water, good fuel, and good grazing, were the 
characteristics that then most concerned us,' though 



A r.AXi) ()i- sii()-sii()-Ni:s m()\i.\(,. ^.3 

there was much also in the natui-al S(.-eiier\ that would 
liave interested the tourist and the scientist. We here 
saw our first and only geyser. The oritiee or throat 
was about the size of a man's tlst, and from this open- 
\ng at rapid inter\als a column of frothing- steam and 
water was ejected into the air a number of feet. After 
each disehar^'e the water lemainino; in the oi'irice could 
be heard i>urglini>- downward, as if seeking an outlet 
in the nethermost pit. Near b}- were the Soda Springs. 
The water of these readily effervesced with soda, and 
thus treated made a very palatable drink. Xearh' all 
of these springs, many in number, had built up about 
themselves cones se\eral feet in height, from the apexes 
of which, when the tiow was not extinct, the water 
kept up a constant bubbling and spurting. We lay b}- 
here o\er Sunda}', refreshing ourselves and teams. 

Near where we left the Bear River, at a point where 
it doubles sharply to the southward in its haste to 
mingle with the waters of the Great Salt Lake, we 
were further regaled by seeing a large band of the 
Sho-sho-ne or vSnake bidians. These, too, were an in- 
teresting t}pe of the Aborigine. The}- were migrat- 
ing nomad-fashion, being generally mounted and car- 
rying with them their families, man\- ponies, and all 
their equipments of the camp, the chase, and the war- 
path. The mounted braves; the fantastic trappings; 
the squaws with their burdens; the motlev households; 
the pack-ponies; the lodge-poles dragging from the 
saddles of the ponies; the platform or litter here and 
there erec:ted on these poles to convey the sick, disa- 
bled and infirm; the whooping \aqueros driving the 




n?u rt 



A nisTi-^icssi'ur. f.xi'I'Ikirnc'R. 45^ 

loose ponies, — all combined to form a most interestin<;- 
panorama, and one the like of which is ne\ er a^ain 
to be witnessed in the wilds ot this countr\'. 

We now at once entered upon a sterile, volcanic 
plain. According- to recent scientific investio-ations, 
this plain was a vast lake of molten lava within a com- 
paratively recent o-eoloo-ical period. (''Geological 
Sketches at Home and Abroad," A. Gieke. ) I accident- 
ally came upon one of the craters, through which this 
sea of liquid tire had once been fed from beneath the 
earth's crust. The aperture was in the form of a long- 
seam or fissure, with irregular walls of black slag-rock, 
the lips of which were tiush with the general face of 
the plain. I dropped a pebble into the opening, and it 
went rattling down, bounding from side to side, till the 
sound, decreasing in volume, was wholly lost in un- 
known depths. 

We were now on the main Oregon emigrant trail; 
but instead of following this northward to Fort Hall, 
on Snake River, we soon after leaving Bear River struck 
to the westw^ard on what was known as Headpath's 
Cut-off. This route had not been opened till that 
season, and there were no guide-books to indicate the 
camping places, as there were for the other roads. We 
usually carried a keg of water, as a precaution against 
anv dearth of the natural supply, either expected or 
unexpected ; but for several days the region through 
which we were passing was quite mountainous, and 
afforded water in such abundance that we began to 
think it needless to exercise our usual practice of lay- 
ing in a supply. It so happened that on the very 



46 A (il.IMPSE OF TUK (;Ri-:A'r s.\i/r T.AKl-:. 

morning- wc had nco'lectcd to till our cask, \vc came 
upon a desert stretch of forty miles. Bein,^- off duty 
I sauntered ahead of the teams. I had also that 
morning- neglected to till my canteen, which I usuall}' 
carried when not with the teams. It was an arid, 
saire-brush plain, which was not onh- destitute of wa- 
ter, but which had drank cNcry suggestion of moisture 
from the atmosphere, and seemed intent on wringing 
every object that came within its embrace as dry and 
parched as it was itself. It was by far the most try- 
ing day's experience I had on the trip. The famish- 
ing effects of the situation soon began to tell upon me. 
Plodding on and on, stirred with alternating hope and 
disappointment upon every apparent change of land- 
scape, I toward the last became so exhausted from 
thirst that I was compelled at frequent intervals to 
pause for a moment's rest and shelter, even welcoming 
for this purpose the presence of the scant}', unsa^•ory, 
detested sage-brush. 

"Traverse the desert, and ye can tell 
What treasures exist in the cold deep well; 
Sink in despair on the red, parched earth, 
And then ye can reckon what water is worth." 

But the co\eted liquid in ample quantit}' was at length 
reached. M3' companions with the teams came on in 
due time, but not of course without both having suf- 
fered greatly. It is astonishing how long one, if dri\ en 
to the test, will bear up^ when he would ordinarily think 
the last reserve force exhausted. 

On this part of the journey, m}- curiosity led me to 
climb a high, commanding eminence, at the loot ol 
which the road passed, and m\' toil v\ as happil}' and 



A COOL RECEPTION. 



47 






uiicxpcctcclly repaid with a tine \ icw of the (ircat 
Sah Lake in the bhie distaiiee. Here and there sti'eaks 
ot dust on the interxenino- desei't plain indicated the 
presenee ol pk)ddinir emisrrant trains on another route: 
as a streak of smoke on the j^reat lakes or on the oeean 
indieates the presenee of a steamer, thoui^'h nothin;^'- else 

|^_-_ than that stieak ma\' be 
be seen. Those t r a i n s 
% were ]')robabh' tortN" to 
fihy miles distant. OnK' 
the steach' elouds of dust 
with their stiflinLj," sii^"- 
i>"estions betokened the 
presenee of the animate 
objeets whose tread thus 
relie\ ed the sterile though 
somewhat pieturesque prospeet. No 
other member of the part}' was fortu- 
nate enough to eateh a glimpse ot this 
onl\- great brin\' inland sea of our hem- 
isplu-re. 

An ineident c^f not (]uite so poetie a 
nature niav be n-lated of our experi- 
enees on this eut-off. As I ha\e alieach' intimated, 
the ereatui-e eomforts of the plains wei\' not jxirtieu- 
larh fruitful of the fi'ame of mind that would in- 
eline ''the ]>rethren to dwell togt'ther in unit\." So 
far as our larder was t'oneerned, we had been tor se\- 
eral weeks redueed to bread, baeon, and blaek, sugar- 
less eoffee; and the tendeney to seur\\- had in some 
instanees beirun to diselose itself. We were i>'oinir 




A LESS FRIGID FIXAT.E. 49 

thi'ouLih ;i narrow cam on, where llic i^oad (.'i-osscd and 
rc-crosscd a cold, rapid brook a branch of Rail Ki\ cr — 
many times, in jMckini;- its tortnons, dnbions wa\ . Xcal 
claimed to be ill, and was 1\ ini^- in one of the wa^-ons 
on an improxised couch w ith a substratum of a half 
ton or so of bacon. Rockhill was dri\ in<4', and. pionipt- 
ed perhaps b\- waii'iiMshness or malice aforethought, 
capsi/ed the wa^'on into the ic\' stream, sousing" the 
invalid into the shi\erinii- bath, anchored to the bottom 
imder bacon and all. .\s niii^ht be sui^mised, that prac- 
tical joke serxed effectualh' to dixest that \ehicle oi its 
use as an ambulance thcreaftei-. 

Nor was this serio-comic scene allowed to *>"() bv 
without its farce, which, if less chilling- to the actors, 
was no less amusing to the b3'standers. We encamped 
shortK' after the mishap just mentioned, to dr\' our 
drenched goods. One of the men was in the wagon 
handing down the \ arious articles to another to spread 
them out on the ground. A (piarrel sprang up between 
the two concerning the ownership of a pillow. I'hey 
were the same men that had the bout o\er the apple- 
sauce back on the Mississippi. The man below hap- 
pened to be holding a frying-pan in his hand at a mo- 
ment when his language and manner indicated that he 
was about to let tl\ this culinar\- imj)lement on a mis- 
sion of vengeance. The other, observing the imminent 
attitude, seized the water-cask and hurled it at his ad- 
versar\-, shouting with dire vehemence, ''D — n you I 
don't throw that at me I" Happily, the alTair termi- 
natetl, as so man\' on the route of a similar nature lei-- 
minated, without phxsical injur\- to anxone. 



III. 

TttE GREAT BA5IIS. 



ME were now in the heart of tlic arid wastes of 
the Great Basin; a region se\-en to eio^ht 
hundred miles in width by twice that dis- 
tance in length and its waters haxing no 
visible outlet to the ocean. In general feature this 
strange country is a high, irregular plateau/ liberally 
studded with bleak and bai-ren mountain peaks and 
fragmentary ranges, which, in a few instances, approach 
the dignity and magnitude of systems. Not indeed 
from the time w^e entered the Black Hills till we looked 
upon the blue expanse of the Pacific, did the eye an^■- 
where or for an instant rest upon a spot not hemmed in 
by mountain barriers. From the Bear River to the 
Sierra Nevadas, the prospect, as I now look back upon 
it, was dreary, monotonous, and irksome in the extreme. 
It struck me as if the Creator, disgusted with His ef- 
forts here at world-making, Iiad abandoned His job half 
finished. Through this region, for about three hundred 
miles, as we then reckoned the distance, our route lav 
along the Humboldt Rixer, whose banks from source 
to mouth were unrelie\ed b\- a single tree or e^•en a 
shrub larger than a stunted willow or sage-brush; and 
which, finallv, as if wearied of its own being, buried it- 

1 Knibraced in past ages a sea, sevcr.il Ininilrcd thoiisanri scui.-irc miles in ex- 
tent, say the geologists. 



OIH PARTINGS EN ROirri:. 53 

self in the tliirsty desert. Iloraee Greeley, ten years la- 
ter, in a thinii,- trip through this region by stage, saw 
enough of its eharaeter to stamp it as the aeme of abom- 
inations.* The emigrants, seeing and knowing more of 
it, eertainly regarded it with fully as hearty a detesta- 
tion, and generally execrated it as the source of their 
worst afflictions on the route. But its presence was 
verv opportune, nevertheless. The journey would 
have been much more difficult, if not impossible, with- 
out its nourishing help, little as that was. The emi- 
grant sought the river at the earliest practicable mo- 
ment, and was loth to quit it where its feeble waters 
vield up to the desert. The first transcontinental rail- 
wa\- was laid out and built along this water course, as 
the most feasible route to be found for the purpose. 
Indeed, much of this region, despite its barren and des- 
olate aspect, and contrary to the universal opinion held 
at that da\- as to its being utterly worthless, has since 
been found to afford fair range for stock, and is now 
all utilized by the ''cattle barons." 

The dwindling down of our party on the plains, one 
by one, from six members to three, has already been 
mentioned. The circumstances mav be noticed here 



1 Greeley, in his 'Overland Journey." in speaking of the Humboldt River, 
among other deprecative things, sajs: " 1 only "'ish to record my opinion that 
the Humboldt all things considered, is the meanest river on earth of its length. 
Though three hundred and fifty miles longit is never more than a decent 
mill-stream. I presume it is the ©nly river of equal length that never had even 
a canoe launched upon its bosom. Its narrow bottom, or intervale, produces 
jrrass; hut so coarse in structure, and so alkaline by impregnation, that no sen- 
sible man would let his stock eat it, if there were any alternative. . . . Half 
a di>i!Cii specimens of a larjie, worthless shrub, known as buffalo-bush or bull- 
berry, with .-) prevalent fringe of willows about the proper size for a school- 
ma'am's use, comprise the entire timber of this delectable stream, whose gad- 
flies, musquitoes. gnats, etc , are so countless and so blood thirsty as to allow 
cattle so unhappy as to be stationed on, or driven along this river, no chance 




54 OUR PARTINGS EN ROl'TE. 

with more particularity. Donahue left us on the Sweet- 
water, where he joined another party. At the Raft 
River camp, Good, having become restive at our slow 
progress, joined James Doane, a home acquaintance, 
who opportunely ()^•ertook us at this point, having 
come the most of the distance from the frontier on 
foot; and the two made the balance of the journey in 

that manner, packing their mea- 
gre outfit on their backs. Much 
better headway was possible 
tra\eling in this manner than in 
an}' other then available, while 
little additional discomfort or in- 
con\enience was suffered; since 
the emigrants that year were 
supplied with abundance of pro\ isions, and were so 
thickly strung along the route, probabl}- at that stage 
of the season all the way from the ^Slissouri Ri^ er to 
the Sacramento, that accommodations could generally 
be obtained when needed. Several weeks later, shortly 
after we entered the Humboldt Valley, EarFs share of 
the outfit, including a wagon and two yoke of oxen, 
was at his request set off to him, when, con\ erting the 
wagon into a cart, he also parted companv with us — 
finally, as it turned out; so that now of our original 
partv onl}' Rockhill, Xeal, and m\ self remained. We 

to eat or sleep. . . . Here famine sits entliioned, and waves his sceptre 
over a dominion expressly made for him The sage-bush and grease- 

wood, which cover the high, parched plain on either side of the river's bottom^ 
seems thinly set, with broad spaces of naked, shining, glaring, blinding clay be- 
tween them; the hills beyond, which bound the prospect, seem evcnuide naked. 
Not a tree, and hardly a shrwb, anywhere relieves their sterility; not a brook, 
save one small one, runs down between them to swell the scanty waters of 
the river." 



A RKFK1<:SHING EPISODE. :; l^ 

kept together till after we reaehed our destination, 
when, as will appear hereafter, we too were separated 
through the exi^Tneies of fortune. 

We had now plodded our wa^■ to a wear\'ino- leno'th. 
To hitcli up and start on with every returning sun liad 
long eomprised the ehief round of our existence. We 
came to wonder how we should feel when this trudg- 
ing routine should be a thing of the past. Thus drag- 
ging our slow lengths along, fatigued, half-hearted, 
nauseated with the e\ er-present sage odor, seeing not 
a single tree, and ha\ ing a dreary, inhospitable soli- 
tude everywhere staring us in the face, we were often 
prone to ask oursehes whether this sort of life was 
ever to ha\e an end. One dav, when groping along in 
this passi\ e, pensi\ e, half-forlorn mood, we perchance, 
on turning a jutting mountain spur, were suddenly 
awakened, amazed, electrified. We had run upon a 
part\- direct from the promised land — straight from 
the enchanting gold iields. The part^■ proN'ed to be 
Mormons with their families en route for Brighamland. 
Their clothing eclipsed any we had ever seen for tat- 
ters and patches; but their oxen, in striking contrast 
with ours, were rolling fat and sleek, and thus excited 
our en\ y. The members of the part}' were quite com- 
municatix e, and gave us a flaming account of the dig- 
gings, backing up their words with a liberal displav of 
the shining nuggets. This was the first real, tangible 
proof we had had of the existence of gold in California. 
We before believed; we now knew. The effect was 
ravishing — sent the mercurN' of our spirits bounding 
up to the extreme limit of our mental barometers. An 



Till-: gh1':knmt()rn ci^T-f)Fi<\ 57 

eldcrl}' member of our party, upon viewing the yellow 
metal, eould not restrain his enthusiasm; but, capering 
about like an exuberant school bo\', and shying his hat 
into the air, shouted: ''Glory Hallelujah! Til be a rich 
man Net/' In marked contrast with this little episode, 
the words of the plaintive ditt}" of the gold-miner, 
which later actual experience had suggested, came to 
m\ mind times many and oft: 

"They told us of the heaps of dtist, 
And the lumps so mighty big; 
But they never said a single word 
Kow hard it was to dig." 

Along the Humboldt River, we were annoyed more 
or less with the visits of squads of the Digger Indians; 
a type chiefl}' distinguished for their tilth}' habits, re- 
pulsive appearance, and pilfering propensities. Their 
inflictions upon the emigrants up to this time had been 
chieriv in the way of persistent begging and petty 
stealing; but, later in the season, their depredations 
took a more serious turn, in the wa}' of running off 
and slaughtering stock, and sometimes in attacking 
and killing the emigrants themselves. When left to 
their own resources, the}^ seemed to subsist mainly on 
the fat black crickets of the valley and the plenitude 
of their own vermin. On a recent trip by rail through 
this section, I saw many of this same species of the red- 
skin orathered about several of the railroad stations. 
As at present fed, clothed, and pampered at the ex- 
pense of Uncle Sam, they show little of the nati\e Dig 
ofer distin<ruishini>- traits. 

At the Meadows, on Humboldt Ri\er, we took the 
Lassen (or Greenhorn) Cut-off. This route struck 
northward from this point across the desert, scaled the 



yS THE GREENHORN CUT-OFF. 

Sierra divide near tlie boundary line between Califor- 
nia and Oregon, and then, doubling a sharp angle to 
the southward, tinally entered the Sacramento Valle}' 
at a point near the present village of Vina, at which 
place the present immense Leland Stanford \ine}ard 

is located. We 



thus u n w i 1 1 i n gl}' 
added five hundred 
to seven hundred 
miles to our jour- 
ney, increasing to 
that extent the tax 
upon our teams, to 
sav nothing of the 
loss of s e \' e r a 1 
wrecks of precious 
time. Our party, 
aiid that of our w^ii- 
lom captain, John- 
son Ilorrell, had 
chanced to fall in 
with each other 
again. Horrell had 
two ox teams. A 
party from Missou- 
ri with a like outfit 
also joined us at 




"l COME FROM OLD MISSOURI, 

ALL THE WAY FROM PIKK!"— t 



1 These lines are from an old-time California comic ballad, which, as sung 
from the stage, took California audiences bystorm; and thus illustrated insome 
degree the levity and ridicule indulged in on the plains and in California in tlie 
early days at the expense of the emigrants from Missouri, seemingly because of 
their odd speech, manners, and dress. They were dubbed indifferently as 
"Pukes," "Pikes," or "I'ike Countians." 



A SRCriON Ol' I'LTTONIA. 59 

about the same time: so that now our train, iuekid- 
ino- our two teams, numbered six wagons, and thus 
constituted, we made the balance of the distance to 
the Sacramento V^alley. 

From the Meadows 
to Mud Lake, about 
a hundred and sixty 
miles, the country 
w^as to all appearance 
destitute of feed; and 
from the Rabbit-IIole 
Wells ( thirt\- seven 
miles out ) to Mud 
Lake, there was no 
water except such as 
from its temperature 
or its mineral proper- 
ties rendered it a very 
poor makeshift. From 
the wells mentioned 
to Black Rock, a dis- 
tance of forty miles, 
there was no water of 
any sort. At Black 
Rock there w^as a ju^^t from •posev-scknts.-.amk.-i 

laro-e hot sulphur spring so strcMigh" impregnated that 
the atmosphere about the \icinit\' was surcharged al- 




1 The Indiaman was known by the pseudonym ''Pike Countian," and was 
held in little less disfavor than the Missounan, as referred to in the note on 
preceding page. The mention of the name "Indiana" or "Hoosier" usually 
provoked some half-humorous, half-contemptuous remark about flat-boating 
on the Wabash, or about the alleged ill-behavior of the Indiana regiment at the 
battle of Buena Vista, the Mexican War being at that time recent history. 



6o 



A S'lAR'IM.lNU; inNl). 



most to suffocation with the vaporous brimstone. 
"Schure, hell ist nielit more es one mile von dis 
blace," is the b\" no means inapt ejaculation ascribed 
to a matter-of-fact son of Teutonia, as he approached 
this steaming cauldron and sniffed its suggestive odors. 
The localit}' was rendered none the more enticing to 
mvself from the fact that, for miles back ahmg the 
road I had come, I could ha^•e stepped almost contin- 
uouslv from the carcass of one dead horse or ox to 

ano t h e r ; 
so g ]■ e a t 
h a d been 
the num- 
ber of an- 
imals that 
h a d here 
peris hed 
from hun- 
ger, thirst 

COYOTE. 

and general exhaustion.^ 

"For lengthening miles on miles they lie, 
These sad memorials grim and hoary, 
And every whitening heap we spy, 

Doth tell some way-worn pilgrim's story."' 

Innumerable co3'otes, too, attracted hither, snapping, 
barking, howling, were rendering the situation none 
the less hideous with their savage orgies over the loath- 
some carrion. 

We made no stop on this forty-mile stretch. Hap- 
pening to be off duty that da}', I wandered alone con- 




1 I noticed on this stretch the familiar forms of Karl's four oxen, where side 
by side the pitiable creatures had perished on the desert. 



A MONSTER l'.()II.IX(; SI'KTNG. 6l 

siderably in advance of the teams, and far in the ni^'ht 
reached the Bhick Rock. (jropin<>- about the brim- 
stone pool at the foot of this huge, forbiddin<;- mass of 
black hua, in the i2;rim, weird-like starlight, 1 was 
startled by stumbling upon an object — -it was a man! 
He was 13'ing among" the sage-bushes, wrapped in his 
buffalo robes. Rousing him up, I learned he was from 
Elkhart, our neighboring burg, one John Arnold by 
name. lie had been packing through with a partN', 
and, taking ill, was unable to travel farther; so that 
he was thus left by his companions, sick, penniless, 
and alone. I remained with him till our teams ar- 
rived, when Captain Ilorrell, being better prepared 
for the purpose than an^■ of the rest of the party, con- 
sented to carry him through, not neglecting however 
to couple with his motives of benevolence the condi- 
tions of what he deemed a good bargain. Most of the 
emigrants that \'ear were furnished the means to make 
the journey on condition that they return as compen- 
sation a certain share of their earninjjfs durino- a stated 
period of time, this share usually being one-half, and 
the time two years. Plorrell exacted for the compar- 
atively small fraction of the journey remaining the 
same terms that ordinaril}' were fixed upon at the 
start. I never heard of Arnold after our dispersion 
upon reaching the mines till two or three vears ago, 
when I learned that he was living in VanBuren Coun- 
ty, Michigan. 

We had become accustomed to springs of almost 
every conceivable variety; but a few miles beyond 
Black Rock, at our tirst stop after leaving the Rabbit- 



MUD T.AKE. 63 

Hole Wells, we encamped at the laro-cst and stroncrest 
boilino- spring of the journey. It tlirew out a stream 
several }ards in width and of ten to twelve miles in 
lentrth to the point where it succumbed to the thirsty 
soil. The water was o-urgling, bubbling hot, but when 
cooled was suitable for use. We had no other for 
camping purpt)ses, and so aNailcd ourselves of the chilly 
night air of that region to prepare as large a supply as 
was possible with our stock of vessels. Rockhill test- 
ed the temperature several hundred feet below the 
spring. The water was clear, and went rippling over 
a pebbly bottom, as harmless to appearance as water 

could be. Rockhill was 
of an original turn of 
mind and given to exper- 
imenting; as Neal was 
quite free to affirm after 
his dousing at Raft River. 
In yoking up his team he was always utterly indiffer- 
ent as to how the oxen were mated, or as to the side 
on which they worked. He had tried the cold water 
on Neal, and now he would try the hot on the oxen. 
He made the trial by driving his team through the 
creek, where he had tested its caloric qualities, and af- 
fected much surprise when he saw the innocent, unsus- 
pecting animals iiing their iioofs high in the air instant- 
1}' upon touching the water. 

Forty miles more of desert brought us to Mud Lake, 
where, finding abundance of water and grass, we lay 
by several davs to recruit our famfshed stock. This 
so-called ^Make" we found to be simply an extensix c 




64 HIGH ROCK CANYON. 

group of springs whose waters here came to the sur- 
face and radiated in ri^•ulets in sueli manner as to form 
a sort of morass containing several hundred acres. 
Some of these springs were cold, some hot, and others 
represented all the degrees of temperature between 
these extremes. I ha^■e a very pleasant recollection of 
one of the brooks that here took its rise soon to lose 
itself in the surrounding desert. This brook was per- 
haps three feet wide and three feet deep. The bottom 
was sandy, the water clear, and just warm enough for 
bathing purposes; as I can personally attest from hav- 
ing here enjoyed the most grateful and refreshing bath 
of my life. But, as usual, there was not a tree to be 
seen; onl)' the everlasting sage-brush. 

Twelve miles from Mud Lake, we entered the High 
Rock Canyon, which possesses some features that are 
unique and striking. It cuts through a range of lava 
that is some twent}' miles in width and as bare of veg- 
etation as if it had cooled but the da}' before. The 
tissure or gorge that afforded us passage is about the 
width of a common road, and is inclosed b}' high walls 
that are carved in irregular outline, as if by the action 
of an ancient ice-ri^•er. The floor is even, free from 
bowlders, and the slope so regular and gentle that it 
seems to descend either why from where nou stand. 
There are few lateral cuts by which egress or ingress 
is possible. A fair growth ot grass and an occa- 
sional clump of the choke-cherrv were the sole e\i- 
dences of life \ isible. Hut what appeared the most 
remarkable was the acoustic effects, as we \eritied 
b\' repeated tests. The report of a rifle would go 



AN IMPRESSIVE ALPINE VIEW. 65 

crashiiiL;- aloiif]^ the ii^orgc, eclioin^- and re-echoing- as if 
all the i;-eiiii of tlie ch'ffs had been startled and were 
shouting- the alarm one to another and answerinj^r it 
back, till the recedini;- sonnd died awav in the solitude. 
This sintrular la\a formation passed, we entered a 
\alley, ei*2,-ht to ten miles in width; the siirfaee of which 
was ashy-like in color, bore the appearance of a dr\' 
lake bed, and was destitute of water and well-nioh of 
vcijetation.'^ On the farther side of this plain, \y\n<^ di- 
rectly across our front, and stretching- awa\' to the 
right and to the left as far as the eve could reach, 
arose a magnificent range of mountains. Looming up 
abruptly from the plain, and thus being unobscured h\ 
the usual foot-hill Bankings, this grand uphea^ al af- 
forded us the most interesting and imp)-essive Alpine 
view we had yet had on the journe\'. Our course now 
lay northward along the base of this range for a num- 
ber of days before we reached the pass or crossing. 
Meantime, the same \allev formation continued, fa- 
\-oring us with an excellent road-bed, while the side of 
the adjacent mountain supplied us, in con\ enient prox- 
imit}-, with luxuri(nis camping places — an abundance 
of water, timber, and wild clover and other nutritious 
grasses. We took this lofty di\ ide to be a part of the 
Sierra Nevada Range, beyond which lay California, 
the land of our dreams. We became impatient, now 
that we supposed ourselves so near, that the enchanting 



1 Rockhill, whose lonjr residence in Nevada, antl whose bent for exploration 
has made him familiar with every jiart of the Far West, writes me that the al- 
kaline lands of this region, including those of this valley, on which scarce any- 
thing else grows, produces an herb known as white sage, which is better for cat- 
tle than alfalfa after the frosts come, when they can licH snow as a substitute 
for water. 



66 



WE REACH I.ASSEN PASS. 



prospect should be so long" withheld from our \ision. 
Thus impressed, the junior Horrell and myself deter- 
mined, one da\- when we were off duty, to scale the bar- 
rier and satisfy our cra\'ing curiosity. The outcome 
proved to be another "tenderfoot" exploitation. After 
climbing laboriously for hours, we finally surmounted 
what we had taken to be the summit; but, lo, another 
and still more formidable ascent loomed up grimly and 
tauntino-ly before us. Wearied and disgusted, we 
turned about for the train, determined to abide the 
regular sequence of events thereafter. When at length 
we reached the Lassen Pass, we found the altitude 
still but little diminished, and the gradient very heav}- 
and laborious. We occupied a part of two days in 
making the passage. A depression at the head of a 
ra\ ine in the face of the acclixitN' furnished us a \ery 
opportune half-wa\" station for camp and for rest. 



z-^S^^ 




IV. 



A WELCOME CHANGE. 



^T"Tf IILS formidable mountain barrier^ crossed, we 
ill did indeed find a welcome change. The 
I moisture-laden, life-giving breezes from the 

Pacific, intercepted by this lofty land eleva- 
tion, had wrouufht the transformation. The \"ast des- 
ert area, with its wide-spread, death-dealing desolation, 
was no longer present. Grass, water, and fuel were 
now abundant. The streams once more went rippling 
"un\"exed''*' to the sea. The flora at times took on 
larger forms than we had ever before seen. We 
passed through miles upon miles of pine forests, whose 
giant growths \\'ere a source of constant surprise and 
admiration. JStill, we were not vet, b\ an\ means, to 
regale ourselves in an ever-recurring Utopia. We vet 

1 Now known as the Warner Range, and, contrary tp what we supposed, 
and what seems still to be the popular notion, belongs to the Great Basin sys- 
tem, instead of either the Sierras or the Cascades. "The Cascade Ranee [Capt. 
C B.Duttoo. U. S Gcol. Survey. 1885—86] is usually represented as a northward 
continuation of the Sierra Nevada. [Fremont so represents it. Memoire. 363. — 
.Author.] In reality an interval of quite a hundred miles separates what may 
fairly be considered the southern end of the Cascades and the northern end of 
the Sierra; and. furthermore, if the trend of the Sierra were continuous north- 
westward, it would pass thirty or forty miles west of the Cascades. .Thesouth- 
crn end of the latter ranjj;e may be located with some approach to precision as 
due east of the base of Shasta." Had Lassen known of this .erap, and gone 
south of the Warner Range, instead of north of it, he would have found, as has 
since been found, <i muph shorter ^nd b«;tter route than his so-called cut-off. 



68 



A DIGGER RAID. 



lacked much of our journey ''s end; yet had tryin^; ex- 
periences before us. 

In one particuhir, at least, our introduction to this 
side of the ranoe was not at all reassuring-. Our iirst 
camp was made a few miles below the foot of Goose 
Lake, from which Pitt Ri^•er, the principal tributar}' 
of the Sacramento, takes its rise. Here, earh' in the 
evening, as appeared by the indications, the Diggers 
raided our stock, taking six of our best oxen; one from 
each of our six teams, as it happened. The theft was 
discovered earlv the next morning, and a detail from 

our camp at 
once pushed 
out upon the 

ALLEN "Pr-TTRKBOX."-! trail of tllC 

thie\es. The course takeii by 
tliem was found to la\' o\ er a re- 
gion c()\ cred with scrubby cedars and show- 
ing a surface so compact that the trail could 
be distinguished onlv bv the marks made by the oxen's 
hoofs in displacing the sharp, flinty rock fragments.^ 
After the marauders had been thus tracked about twen- 
ty miles, the attention of our party was suddenly 
aroused by a loud shriek from behind a ledge of rocks, 
and, at about the same instant, a number of redskins 
were seen, down in a ravine w^alled in by volcanic bowl- 
ders, betaking themselves to their heels as fast as their 
legs could carry them. But the cowardlv flight of the 

1 The revolver most seen in '49. — (3y courtesy of H. C. Cassidy, Chicago, 111.) 

2 This region has since become known as the Lava Beds, where, in the win- 
ter of X87i— 73, Captain Jack and his Modocs treacherously slew General Can- 
by and gave the Government such a deal of trouble. 




AX ()Ki:(;()\ l'.\R'['V MRT. 69 

savaefes was of little avail to us, as cxcry ox had al- 
• ready been put to the knife. Nor was it practicable 
under the circumstances even to destrov the carcasses; 
so that, after our departure, the guilt}' miscreants had 
onh" to return at their leisure to enjoy the fruits of 
their spoil. Our partv were indeed fortunate in be- 
intr able to <;et out of the affair even as well as the\' 
did; for the da\" was damp and drizzling, and, as was 
ascertained afterward, not a single gun would have 
been serviceable, in consequence of the exposure to 
dampness. 

We were now on the California-Oregon wagon 
road, 
a n d, 
in the 

course' of coi.rvs 

a few days, met another part\' from 
the diggings. This was made up of return- 
ing Oregonians, led by (Tcneral Palmer, a 
former ''Iloosier." Again we were faAored with a 
rose-colored picture of ''the chunks so mightv big."" A 
member of the party — a physician — inquired whether 
we had any saleratus to spare, basing his inquirv upon 
the assumption that we had laid in a goodh- supplv 
from the deposits back on the Sweetwater. When he 
found we were unable to accommodate him, he was 
kind enough to inform us that the article was of good 
quality, and was worth sixteen dollars a pound in the 
mines; information that came a little late- to be of 
much value to us. 




1 The best|side-firearm in '49.— ( Lent hy J. W. Camper, South Hcnd, Ind.) 



70 A RAD STRETCH OF ROAD. 

Somewhere in this section a squad of Digg-ers^ came 
to our train, and, seemingly for the tirst time, hiid e\"es« 
upon a black man. Their astonishment and curiosit\- 
were unbounded. They peered up iiis sleeves, down 
his back, into his bosom, and lifted his trousers'-leg, to 
assure themselves that there was no hoax about the 
matter — that the cuticle was really black, and black 
all over. When satisfied as to this, their curiosity 
turned to contempt and derision — to tinger-pointing, 
jeers, and laughter, evidently greatly to the disrelish 
of their victim. This same negro, as I learned several 
years later, turned out to be a much 'duckier" moncN"- 
getter than his ex-owner; and not onlv purchased his 
freedom, but also furnished the means to take both his 
ex-master and himself back to the old Missouri home. 

Mention has already been made of the Feather Riv- 
er Meadows, or the Big Meadows, as now known. Jt 
was here, it will be remembered, that game was found 
so plenty, and that Neal brought in se\en blacktail 
deer, and I none. The camp was a truh' .desirable 
one in every respect, — grass luxuriant and abundant; 
timber plenty and con^■enicnt; a copious stream of 
cold, clear, pure water; majestic mountains i-()untlnbout ; 
and, witlial, a \ eritable hunter's paradise. We a^ ailed 
oursehes of these raix- ad\ antages for scn eral davs, 

1 The male Diggers of California, atthatday, usually went entirely nude, only 
as they might have happened to don a hat. a shirt, or some other oasi.iway gar- 
ment ofthe whites that they had picked np. Thesquaws wore from the waist to 
a little below the knees a sort of skirt made of tanned skins, doubled the longer 
way, and all except the width ofabout twoinchtsfor a waist-belt, cut into "shoe- 
strings," with shellsand other ornaments dangling at the nether ends. The 
strings of this skirt, or cincture, were sometimes elaborately plaited or woven, 
and decorated with beads, colored grasses, and various kinds of plumage. The 
women generally wore what Prof. (). T. M.-json described as "the daintiest cap 
in the world, a hemispherical bowl of basketry made of tough fibre twined with 
the greatest nicety and embroidered in blacl>, brown, sind yellow." 



1^ 



A BAD STKEPCH OF ROAD. 



but mainly with the view to prepare for the exigencies 
that we were forewarned were immediately to follow. 
For from this point to the Sacramento Valley, some 
seventy-five miles, the country was, practically speak- 
ing, destitute of both feed and water. Over much of 
this distance, the track crept along on the crest of 
a very narrow% tortuous divide, or hogback, between 



buried down 
cipitous can- 
than two thou- 
At one point, 
came so ob- 
craggy, beet- 
that it could 
ed at all; thus 

' the deflection 

' through a deep 
zQ b o t t o m of 

^compelled to 
night, without 
tor our stock, 

^,the sage-brush 
for fuel.^ 

A DIGGER BELLE.— (FROM A PHO- • , C t. \ 

TOGHAPH.) ^Pite of the 

darkness, and by dint of heroic effort, succeeded in 
picking his way to the creek^ at the bottom of the can- 



two s t r e a m s 
in dark, pre- 
y o n s , more 
sand feet deep, 
the crest be- 
structed wnth 
ling ledges 
not be follow"- 
necessitating 
of the trail 
hollow, at tlic 
which we w ere L 
encamp for the I - 
feed or water 
and with onh 
of days agone 
Rockhill, in 




1 Here, where it was bad enough in all conscience to have to remain a single 
night, a month or so later, a party of emigrants, including several families, 
were snowed in and compelled to remain during the entire winter. Among 
these, were the Reverend William Roberts and family, whose unhappy experi- 
ences while thus imprisoned I heard detailed from their own lips. 

2 Deposits of rich auriferous gravel were afterward discovered on this 
stream,— Deer Creek. 



A TKAMSTKR FN TKIKtTI.ATlON. ^-^ 

yon, and bringing back enough water for our stinted 
personal needs. 

It fell to Neal to take a day at the whip on this ex- 
ceptional stretch of road. Now, courage and compos- 
ure under difficulties had little part in NeaTs composi- 
tion. He was always quick to yield the whip to some 
one else when a bad or dangerous piece of road oc- 
curred. But in this instance he had no alternative. J 
had been taking his relief, as well as my own, for sev- 
eral days consecutively, and, on that morning, stoutly 
demurred to doing so longer. The sequel was not at 
all beatifying — to Neal. AVHiat with the sharp ridge, 
the quick curves, the sudden jogs, the obtruding rocks, 
and the dizzy precipices, he was kept in a constant fer- 
ment of fright and excitement. Whipping from one 
side of the team to tlie other, and punching the wheel- 
oxen this wa\' or that, as some dreaded object ap- 
peared, constituted his chief di\ ersion for the day. I 
was trudging along, mute and stolid, behind the wag- 
on, while the most ot this grotesque shuttle-cock per- 
formance was going on. Neal demanded that I do 
the punching on one side while he did it on the other; 
but 1 was obdurate, protesting that I had asked him 
for no help when I was in similar straits, and that now 
he need ask no help from me. The result was, that I 
was the recipient of much fervid attention at his hands, 
as he rushed back and forth past me on his frantic 
rounds. Meanwhile, Rockhill came bowling: alonii' in 
our immediate rear with our other team, with his ox- 
en mated hit or miss as usual, and exhibiting the ut- 
most unconcern as to whether his team or himself was 



74 NEARINCi THE SACRAMENTO. 

right side up or wrong side up; yet he managed to 
steer clear of all mishaps, just the same. 

We laid in as much liay and water at tlie Meadows 
as we were able to carry. Others, of course, took the 
same precaution. But the supply necessarily fell much 
short of being adequate, and the strain upon the stock 
was so great that much of it perished. A train from 
Columbus, Ohio, were compelled on this account to 
abandon all their wagons, fifteen in number, and of 
course the most of their goods, when within less than 
twenty miles of the Sacramento Valley. Our teams, 
however, bore up heroically until the worst was over 
and we were coursing along smoothly upon the bosom 
of the great valley. But the last straw, so to speak, 
broke the camel's back. We still had eight to ten 
miles to water and a camping place. Several of the 
oxen became exhausted, and one after another sank 
down in the yoke. We had no recourse but to aban- 
don them where the}' lay, and reconstruct our teams 
as best we could. Thus we worried our way to camp. 
We were delighted, the next morning, to find the oxen 
we had left behind grazing upon the wild oats with 
the rest of the cattle, as if nothing had happened. The 
coolness of the night had so refreshed tliem that the\ 
became able to follow us to feed and to water. Man}- 
of the outfits improvised from the sahage of the 
wrecks on the plains, similar to our own, but worse, 
would have been quite amusing, had they not told so 
serious a story. It was no uncommon thing to see 
emigrants — perhaps families — come in off the plains 
having all their worldly effects that they had been able 



THE SAt'KAMKNTO A'l' F.AST. 75 

to save packed in an abbreviated cart drawn b\ a ca\- 
iise harnessed with a cow or an ox, or c\ en upon tlie 
back of a sinule ox or cow. 




"D — N THE HUMBOLDT!" 



This camp was at Lassen's ranch, where Peter Las- 
sen had erected a log cabin, and was keeping a small 
stock of staple goods. This was the first sign of ci\ - 
ilization we had seen for many a da}". It was a motley 
scene of emigrants, Indians, old-time Californians, etc., 
that greeted our \ ision. Not many rods awa\- flowed 
the poetic river — the Sacramento, — of whose ^'glitter- 
ing sands" we had sung upon leaving home. We were 
not long in hastening down to gaze upon its crystal, 
magic waters. It was a moment of strange, deep, 
soul-stirring emotions as we flrst stepped upon its 
banks. Was this indeed our journey ''s end.^ — this the 
goal of our man}- weary days, weeks, and months of 
toil, privation, peril.-' Had we undergone some Pytha- 
gorian transformation of soul, we could scarce ha\ e 
felt more strange, fanciful, etherial. The eleventh da} 
of October! Yes, seven months and nineteen days 
since we began the journey. It had been a trul}' event- 
ful perio.d in life's brief span; an episode of quaint, va- 



76 THE "glittering SANDS/'' 

ried, and impressive scenes, incidents, and experiences, 
which must ever remain stamped in vivid oiitHne on 
memory's tablet. 

We had been singing, as already mentioned, of the 
"glittering sands" of the Sacramento. We were now, 
of course, anxious to verify our long-cherished antici- 
pations. There, surely enough, were "glittering sands" 
dazzling upon the eye, as the current whirled the tiak}- 
particles over and over in the sunlight. Were these 
particles gold.^ — were these really the "sands" we 
were to gather with wash-bowls on our knees .^ We 
would fain believe, but could not trust our senses. 
Captain Horrell had been to us a sort of Sir Oracle in 
all things. The Captain, moreover, had been a dili- 
gent student in geolog}' and mineralogy all the way 
out. We en\'ied him his knowledge in these now prac- 
tical sciences. He would have, we were sure, mucii 
the ad\ antage of us in discovering and identifying the 
precious stuff. The Captain was, therefore, at once 
besought to enlighten us as to the composition of these 
drifting atoms, 'i'he moment his ready eye was fo- 
cused upon the sparkling objects, he exclaimed, witii 
an air 6f perfect assurance: "Oh, yes; those are gold; 
but the particles are too tine to pay to gather them." 
It turned out that the bright flakes were simply scales 
of mica, mingled with the other ingredients of disinte- 
grated granite, of which substances the lower bottoms 
of the river are almost wholh composed. 

We were still fifty to sixty miles from the point 
where we decided to locate,— Redding's Diggings. 
A conspicuous landmark on this short journey was the 



SHASTA MUT'I K. 77 

erreat white clonic of Sliasta Butte. Kisiiii'- direeth in 
our front, and far o\ ertoppin*;- all the other peaks and 
ranges within our scope of \ ision, it constantl}' chal- 
lensred attention, thouirh we were at no time less than 
seventy to eight}- miles awaw 

•'Behold the dread Mount Shasta, where it stands 
Imperial midst the lesser heights; and, like 
Some mighty impassioned mind, companionless 
And cold." 

This huge pile is said to be visible from Monte Dia- 
blo — two hundred and tift\- miles, "as the erow Hies;'' 




v> 



"\^f»,'l#p'^'*^ ' 



SHASTA BUTTE. QFROM A PHOTOGRAPH.) 

and, today, "■from the dome of the eapitol at Sacra- 
mento, it meets the eye of many a gazer who knows 
not its name or the great distance it lies to the nortli. 
The mariner on the ocean can see it, and emigrants on 
the parched deserts of Nevada have tra\ eled toward 
it day after day, an infallible guide to lead them, on to 
the land of gold.'' Little wonder, therefore, that the 
"Poet, of the Sierras," standing on the summit of this 



7^ THOSE CHUNKS SO MIGHTY BIG. 

monarch of the mountains, in a presence suggesti\e of 
the thunderbolt, the volcano, the avalanche, and the 
earthquake, should thus give wing to his fancy: 

"I stood where thunderbolts were wont 
To smite thy Titan-fashioned front; 
I heard large mountains rock and roll ; 
1 saw the lightning's gleaming rod 
Reach forth and smite on heaven's scroll 
The awful autograph of God." 

We pitched our camp at the extreme head of the 
Sacramento Valle}', upon very nearl}-, if not exactly, 
the site of the present town of Redding. These mines 
were known as ''dry diggings, '' which were worked 
chiefly with pick, spoon, and pan, there being no wa- 
ter convenient to run the rocker or the long-tom. Tlic 
diggings, so fer as our experience went, "panned out'' 
decidedly ''dry" indeed. During our week's trial, we 
averaged hardly a dollar a day to the man; and our 
geological and mineralogical expert did no better than 
the rest of the party. My first experience was to pros- ' 
pect a "pot-hole," which I discovered in winding my 
wa\' up the dr}- bed of a gulch, which had been 
scooped and swirled out through a hard granite ledge. 
I imagined that the nuggets, in being swept down the 
channel during freshets, would surely have lodged in 
a receptacle so convenient and befitting, and wondered 
that so promising a "lay-out" had not been discovered 
before. The pot-hole, or pocket, proved to be shaped 
like an inverted balloon; and it took a half day's \ ig- 
orous, feverish labor at my hands to reach the bottom, 
when with bated breath I discovered— well, not even 
so much as the "color." Any experienced miner would 
have known beforehand that such would be the out- 



A CHANGE OF BASE. 79 

come. We all became thoroughly disgusted with our 
'Muck'' here; and Rockhill, Neal, and myself deter- 
mined uj")on a change ot base. 

We were informed tliat at Sacramento— e\erybody 
called it wSacramento C/'/y in those da\s — sixteen dol- 
lars per cord was the current price paid for wood-chop- 
ping; and, being all of us accustomed to the woods 
and the ax, we at once decided to head for that point, 
which was about a hundred and se\ ent\-H\ e miles dis- 
tant. Good had rejoined us since our arrival off the 
plains, and was at the time awa\ prospecting with ex- 
Governor Redding and part\ . But we were too im- 
patient of delax' to aw ait his return. B\ arrangement, 
Neal and I started ahead on foot, and Rockhill was to 
follow with the team. The Sacramento River was 
forded a short distance aboxe the mouth of Antelope 
Creek, both as we went up and as we returned. Near 
the ford, we were treated to a California rodeo, or 
round-up, with the accompanying process of cattle- 
branding, which was the first exhibition of that sort 
we had ever seen. The vaqueros appeared all to be 
trained Indians. A calf would be singled out from the 
herd and pursued by several of the vaqueros, each 
swinging his coiled lariat over his head, and yelling 
with the \ehemence of true savagery. The animal 
was soon ensnaied about the head or the neck from 
opposite sides b\ two of the horsemen, when a third 
horseman came up from the rear and threw a noose 
around the hind legs. The three lariats, each secured 
to the ponmiel of a saddle, were now drawn taut in 
cliffer<?nt directions, which threw the \ ictim, and held 



8c) A CHANGE OI' I'.ASE. 

it sociircK while tlie branding-iron (heirro) was pressed 
into the c|ui\ cring tiesli. It was all the work of but a 
moment. 

At about this point, the rainy season began, and be- 
gan in earnest. In a few days the most of the streams 
were out of their banks, and the valley had become 
next to impassable for teams. Neal and I, however, 
worried our wav forward till w^e reached Long's Bar, 
on Feather River. We found a state of things here 
far from comforting. The ri\ er was a roaring torrent, 
and the ferry-boat had /-|, been swept away and 

drowned the ferry- ,^^ man the day before 

our arriNal. The l,^^ camp was made up 
ehiefl} 




THE OLD-TIME CALIFORNIA VAQUEKO. 



and was \^x\ nearly destitute of prox isions. The most 
of the teams had been sent to Sacramento for winter 
supplies; but the Hoods and bottomless roads had made 
it impossible for them to return. We had expected to 
meet a home acquaintance at this camp, which had 
aroused in us \i\id conceptions of ''square mealsWand 
other bodih- comforts. But, when within a mile or two 
of the place, we met that same acquaintance hobbling 
up the mountain side. lie had a gun on his shoulder; 



A LONELY JAITNT. 8 1 

had just coino out of a sc\crc spell of sickness, he said; 
was out of "iiTub;"" and wanted to see it he eouldn't 
kill a jaek-rabbit or somethini;- else to reliex e his i^aunt 
stomach. A more forlorn picture than he presented 
could scarceh' be ima^'ined. We had now oursehes 
«;'ot down to our last tift\' cents. Xeal succeeded in 
^■ettin^' cmploNinent, at four dollars per da\ and board. 
I went down to the four-b\'-si.\ tent, ^^'here he \\'as 
stopping", to bid him goocl-bN e. I found him standing" 
in front ot the tent in the rain, warming oxer a batch 
ot boiled beans in a fr\ing-pan, which was the sum to- 
tal he had for his breakfast. lie, meanwhile, kept up 
a vigorous whistling, as if to compensate for the mea- 
grencss of his meal, and to dispel the melancholy, if 
not the ludicrousness, of the situation. 

^W" ai'ranged that 1 should push forward to Sacra- 
mento, and that he should follow in four daxs. I, ac- 
cordingly, took nur cash balance and struck out for 
the citx", afoot and alone. The first night out, I made 
mv camp under a-friendly oak, without tire or food. 
It rained almost continuously during the whole trip. 
My only protection was a pair of Mackinac blankets. 
These I threw over my shoulders to protect me from 
the rain by day, and I rolled up in them to sleep the 
best I could by night. All the ferry-boats on the river 
were adrift, so that I was unable to cross for several 
days. Very opportunely, I came upon a party of three 
men, who with their team were detained on account 
of the condition of the roads. They were from Mich- 
igan. Their stock of proxisions consisted of flour, and 
flour only. This they made into mush, which the\- 



82 



A SAD PLIGHT A I.TDICROUS FIGURE. 



iicncroush shared with me. Finally, a man came up 
I Ik- ri\cr in a yawl after some hay. I assisted him in 
Iiis work, and he reciprocated by taking me down the 
ri\ er and landing me on the opposite side, at Fremont; 
an ambitious citv in embryo at the junction of the 
Feather and the Sacramento Rivers. The only re- 
sources of this "city'' seemed to be town lots. I was 
not at all in a speculative mood at the time; and, though 
it was late in the day, I struck out at once across the 
open plain for Sacramento. The trip was not under- 
taken as if it were b\ any means to be a pleasure 
jaunt. Xiii'ht came on, and, after pushing along a 
number of hours, a light appeared ahead in the dis- 
tance. The sight was a most welcome one; but, on 
arri^ ing upon the scene, my joy was quickly dispelled. 
Here, in the mid-plain, were a man and his wife, with 
their wagon swamped, and 
their oxen in the mire, dead. 
The couple were headed for 
the mines with their winter's 
' stock of provisions, and were 

■ thus hopelessly stranded. The 
road was strewn with man}- 
evidences of similar sad expe- 
riences. I must myself haNc 
cut a hidicrous, if not a pitia- 

■ ble, figure, as I went plashing 
"along through the rain and 

mud and shish, with m\- bhuik- 
ets ()\ er me, m^" boots across 
m\- shoulder, m\' pants i-ollcd 




KMT MY r,AST I'WO-BITS. 83 

up to my kncc-s. n\y white wool hat <4()iic to seed clown- 
Inshioii, ami in\ riads ol clucks, ijeese, and hi'ants qiiawk- 
iiiLi' and tla]")}iinL:' theii winirs o\ er ni\" head. But, — 

■'Come what come may, 
Tiiiu- and the liotir runs through the roughest day." 

The .\meiiean Ri\ er was at length reached. It took 
m\" last two-bits — a dime and a Spanish shilling — for 
feniaij,e: so that I entered Sacramento in a worse 
piedicament than Doctor Franklin's when he entered 
Philadelphia, — had no pennies for loa^■es, to say noth- 
ing of a whistle. 







V. 
STRANGE 5GENE5 AND EXPERIENCES. 



^^^■■^^HE appearance . of Sacramento was truly 
I M f unique. Nearly or quite all the buildings 
111 were made of can\as tacked upon poles. 
•^' "^ It was practically at the head of na\ iga- 
tion on the Sacramento Ri\ er, and was thus the entre- 
pot for the central and the northern mines. All was 
intense bustle and excitement. A \ cry hotly contested 
election^ was in progress, which still further intensified 
the situation. Here, intermingled and jostling each oth- 
er, were representatives from e\ cry quarter of the globe, 
all moved by the one engrossing purpose, — gold. 

"Extremes of liabits, manners, time, and space, 
Brought close together, here stood face to face; 
And gave at once a contrast to the view, 
That other lands and ages never knew." 

It was surprising to note the facilit}" with which men 
adapted themselves to the new conditions. A ph}si 
cian of my acquaintance I found engaged in draying. 

1 Held on November 13, when members of Congress were elected and a com- 
plete State government was set up. in pursuance of a constitution framed and 
adopted bj- the people, without authorization by Congress, the only instance 
of the sort in our history. TTie firm stand taken in this constitution for free- 
dom was, as noticed incidentally by Gen. Bidwell in a letter to the writer, the 
first decisive event in that series of momentous historic movements that ulti- 
mately culminated in the destruction of slavery and the fruition of a united and 
homogeneous country. 



z 
z > 

H M 

Si f 

O »> 

K5 : 











86 



A HEARTY MEAL A LITTLE OMINOUS. 



Tlie lawyer, who had so gallantly come to my defense 
hack on the plains, greeted me from the top of a high 
rick of sacked tiour, which he was cr^'ing off at auc- 
tion. A preacher, who had parted with us early on 
the route, because we sometimes traveled of Sundays 
when we did not have suitable camping places to lay 
o\ er, had changed the pulpit for the saloon. There 

was little ^''5^'^''^^^^^^'^%. leisure for 

choosing an j^P ^t occupation ; 

the first op- M. r^^ki^:^ W port unit}' 

offered had hli/wi^^ '^^ Wt to be laid 

hold of, for Iji' m Jftffm^. ||''|iiiiii '^ time at 

least. My i'lF *^^*' .' 'S/il , first and on- 



h' job in the 
much of be- 
fancy. Since 
]M i c h i g a n 
the Feather 
had nothing 
a p p e t i t e , 
had become 
whetted 
my place 
ofuestsatthe 




cit}' lacked 
ing to my 
leaving my 
friends on 
River, I had 
to eat. My 
therefore, 
so keenly 
that I took 
among the 
first table 1 



saw, taking my chances as to what might follow. 
This was at Knight's Hotel, probably the best of its 
kind in the cit}-. though constructed of canvas, like 
the rest of the makeshifts about it. One of the pro- 
prietors stood in the door to attend to the guests as 
they departed. This rendered the situation a little 
ominous for me; but, after fully satisfying my inner- 



A (iKL'KSOMK SI' Ja'IACl ,E. J^y 

man, I at once approached this dignitary as an apph'- 
cant for work. He quickl}- responded, "Yes; have 
you had youi" dinner.'" I replied that I had. He 
thereupon immediately put a man in his place, and bid 
me follow him to the boat-landing, where 1 shouldered 
up se\eral rough boards and packed them to the rear 
of the hotel. Here, clad in dirty red flannel shirts and 
blue o\ eralls, and ]\ ing upon a board outdoors, ex- 



posed to the 
were the re- 
two miners, 
work mak- 
es from the 
carried up 
ial of these 
that is the 
for m\' din- 
spectacle, as 
job, was far 
table, espe- 
was at the 




PHOTOGRAPH. 



SEE FOOT-NOTE, PAGE 80. 



pelting rain, 
mains of 
I w as set at 
ing two box- 
boards I had 
for the bur- 
bodies; and 
w^ay I paid 
n e r. T h e 
well as the 
from delec- 
c i a 11 y as I 
time afflict- 



plaint of // which these 

poor fellows had died. Dysenter\- of a malignant type 
was prevalent; and, as the doctors had not learned how 
to treat the disease as modified by that environment, 
the mortalit}' from this cause was very great. Later, 
such gruesome spectacles, I was told, were of every- 
day occurrence about this establishment; so common 
indeed as no longer to invoke coffin, winding-sheet, or 
ceremony of any sort, sa\e the dray and spade, as the 







i H 



SUT'I'ICK's I'OKI'. 89 

carcass of a dog- would be treated. Many of these, no 
doubt, were well-to-do at the far-awa}- home, where all 
the cherished endearments of family and friends were 
awaiting their return; but, it may be, that the record- 
ing- angel alone will ever know of their hapless idnd 
on eai'th. 

"How little do we know of what we are, 
How less, of what we may he." 

Two miles from the Sacramento, and east of the 
city, was the famous Sutter's Fort, ^ which up to 

that season had been j the terminus of the only 
overland wagon trail entering California, and 

which for nearl}- a d( 








SUTTER"S FOKT, 1890. — (from a PHOTOGRAI'H.J 

cade had been the focal point of the American residents 
of the country. Hence, probably, the name of the 
river near b}', — Rio de los Americanos. The fort was 

1 General John Bid well, of Chico. Cal., a pioneer of '41, who was long con- 
nected with this fort as Sutter's general manager, and who retains a vivid 
recollection of its plan in detail, has kindly furnished me \vith an outline sketch 
and other valuable data to aid in the drawing of this cut. which he upon exam- 
ining the proof pronounces substantially correct and a much truer picture than 
any of the many others that had come to his notice. I revisited the site of this 
fort in 1884.. and was pained to note that the central two-story adobe building 
was all thatremained of this monument of aunique and picturesquepast. This, 
too, was wholly neglected and in an advanced state of decay. A more apj)re- 
ciative public, however, h.as quite recently restored the whole structure, of 
which I have received a photograph since 1 wrote the foregoing. 



go OFF AGAIN FOR THE MINES. 

established by Captain John A. Sutter ( 1803-1880 ) as 
the headquarters of his great rancho, upon which he 
had other improvements, including the saw-mill, at 
which the gold was discovered. Captain Sutter was 
an ex-officer of the Swiss army, emigrated to this 
countr}- in 1H38, lived in Indiana for a while, and, final- 
ly, after several years of adventure, found his way to 
California, in 1840. He is said to have been liberal 
and hospitable to a fault. "Everybody was welcome — 
one man or a hundred, it was all the same.'^ Yet, it 
was his grim fate to die upon the verge of pauperism. 

The wood-chopping project not turning out as ex- 
pected, I again set face for the mines, a friend having 
loaned me the wherewith for the purpose. I did not 
wait for Neal, and it was well that I did not; for he 
drifted elsewhere, and I saw him no more. Nor did I 
again meet Rockhill until I met him at home, seven 
3'ears thereafter. I then, for the first time, learned of 
his fate after we separated at Redding's. He had not 
been able, in consequence of the floods, to get the team 
any farther than Deer Creek, where he left all the prop- 
erty in charge of a ranchman, one Colonel Anthony- 
Davis; and, in the Spring, when an accounting was 
sought, both ranchman and propert}' had disappeared, 
not again to be found. ^ 

I now headed for Coloma, about tifty-tive miles dis- 
tant, of course still "tramping" it. At all stations 
along the road, beginning with the Ten Mile House, 
meals were two dollars each. The lodging accommo- 

1 A statement which 1 was pleased to have verified thirty-five years latcr 
through my accidental meeting of the ranchman's widow in another and dis- 
tant part of the state. 



PLODl)IN(i TOWARD IHI-: MINES GA.MliLINC. 9I 

dations were overtaxed at e\ ery point. At Shingle 
Springs, I paid a dollai- for tlie privilege of lodging in 
a covered cart, in i-onipany with a barrel of pork. It 
was raining hard, and that was the only alternative. 
Of course one had to furnish his ow^n beddino- in those 



days, no matter 
lodge. The 
w retched that 
be got to the 
pack-an i nia 1 s. 
pound was the 
to Coloma and 
\v h i c h \\' c r e 
distance from 
(toUI dust was 
currency, and 
and the scales 
every place of 
weights were of- 
and of very du- 
gravity. The 
faro tables were 
ning flush. The 
indeed is the 
in all new m in- 
most pretentious 
gantly furnished 




K TVPICAT, <)1,1)-TIM KK.-1> 



where he might 
roads were so 
supplies could 
mines only b\- 
A doll a r per 
)\. customar\- rate 
'^) to Ha ngtown, 
about the same 
vSaera m e n t o. 
the universal 
the ^'blower''"" 
were a fixture in 
business. The 
ten home-made, 
bious s p e c ill c 
monte and the 
everywhere run- 
gambling table 
chief attraction 
ing regions. The 
and most ele- 
(juarters, wheth- 



er tents by the roadside or palaces in a city, are dedi- 

1 A shallow sort of tra.v, usually of tin. triantjular-shapetl, with one corner 
open, used to blow black sand and other foreign substances from {lold dust, 
and to handle the dust about the scales 

'J The "Panama" bat, silk sash, embroidered shirt, and absence of vest anU 
coat — somewhat after the Mexiean style — made up a costume much affected iu 



92 AT THE "mountaineers' HOME." 

cated to this purpose. Such resorts are, in fact, about 
the onl}^ places in such regions where men can pass 
their leisure hours or find companionship and recrea- 
tion. 'Tis ever thus, — Brazen Vice rears his gilded 
temples before Modest Virtue scarce thinks of break- 
ing ground. The brood of "suckers" was especially 
bountiful while the intiow of the annual overland emi- 
gration lasted. 



'Could fools to keep their own contrive, 
On what, on whom, could gamesters thrive?" 



My first 
a double-log 
the Sacra- 
loma road, a 
west of the 
It was called 
t a i n e e r s ' 
and was a 
ern and trad- 
combined, 
occupation 
was cutting 
at a dollar 
wood at five 
c o r d, t h e 

brittle and THEmSCOVEREROFGOLDATST'TTER'SMILL 

oaks. Board was six dollars per day, the sumptuous 
fare consisting of bacon, beans, coffee, and musty-sog- 

tbose days; and was the object of awe and admiration of the "tenderfoot." 
who looked upon the chaps thus pompously clad as being already surfeited 
with the precious dust. Everybody had also a penchant for gibbering Spanish. 
The typical miner, as usually represented in the prints, is mere caricature, the 
shabby clothes and the unkempt person being no more than the natural result ot 
the neglect and indifference that men drop into in the absence of society every- 
where. 




halt was at 
house, on 
m en to-Co- 
mile or two 
latter place, 
the " Moun- 
Home," 
sort of tav- 
i n g - p o s t 
My chief 
while here 
house 1 o gf s 
each and 
dollars p e r 
latter from 
.crooked 



SOME INFELICITOUS RECOLLECTIONS. 



93 



ory-buggy-worm\" bread. Flour was two dollars per 
pound, and a \ illainous article at that, the most of it 
having made the \ oyage round Cape Horn and heated 
in the ship's hold. Potatoes were eight dollars per 
pound, the chief use to which they were put being as 
a cure for scur\ \ , which complaint was then quite 

The locality 
\ er\- he a rt 
diggings in 
but we did 
this at the 
often picked 
s i / e d nug- 
d o o r - yard 
\y rain; but 
cur to any of 
pect for dig- 
er there or 
else in the 




c o m m o n. 

was in the 

of the best 

California, 

not know 

time. We 

u p g o o d - 

gets in the 

after a hea- 

it did notoc- 

us to pros- 

gings, eith- 

anywhere 

flat of sev- t^ 4^ (^<M^^eyy^-^ eral acres in 

which the cabin was 

situated. My recollections of the place are cherished 

none the more because of the presence of a victim of 

delirium tremens, who imagined that he was in hell 

suffering the torments of the damned, while just beyond 

him, in plain \ iew, was hea\ en, with the angels in the 

full ecstacx of bliss. Another incident of the place 

1 Henry W. Bigler, St. George, Utah; Azariah Smith, Manti, Utah; and 
James S. Brown and William Johnson, Salt Lake City, Utah, all Mexican War 
veterans, and ex-members of the famous Mormon Battalion, which was mus- 
tered out in California, in 184S, are the only survivors of the gold discovery 
party now known to me. Peter L. Wimmer, of San Diego, Cal ; and Wilford 
Hudson, of Grantsville, Utah, also of that party, were living, according to "The 
Century," in 18il; but I do not know whether they are living now — 1895. 



FROM A PHOTOGRAPH. 



94 



A CASE AT THE WHIPPIN(;-POSn\ 



may be worth relating, as indicative of the social state 
of the time. One e^ ening, as we were sitting about 
our generous chimney-tire, a guest dropped in upon us 
for the night. He was a striking character — young, 
dark complex ioned, dashing, of splendid physique, and 
of pleasing, cultured address. He was partly dazed 
fro m t h e 
drink, but in 



nonchalant 
gave us his 
brief as fol- 
had belong- 
to a detach- 
United 
lars, which 
i n g the 
season to 
When near 
of the Cali- 
O r e g o n 
took French 
appropriat- 
t h e best 




2Jv/y0|^n4^fe 



e ff e c t s of 
a n e a s \- , 
ni a n n e r , 
s t () r \', i n 
I o \\' s : He 
ed, he saitl, 
m e n t of 
States regu- 
was ci" OSS- 
plains that 
O r e g o n . 
the junction 
fornia and 
r o ads, he 
leave, and, 
ing two of 
army hors- 



es, had made his wa\" to the (jolden State. Just 
now, he had emerged from the culminating scene in a 
series of other adventures. There were many -cattle 
roaming at will on the plains about Sacramento that 
winter, and wagons and other team appurtenances were 
easy of access about the city. From these sources he 
became possessed of a four-ox team, on the same princi- 
ple that he had become possessed of the two Govern- 



A CASE AT THE WHTPPTNG-POST. 



05 



mcnt horses. Thus ccjiiippcd, he souL^ht and obtained 
a load ot tVeiii^hl toi- the mines, foi- whieh he was to 
i^eeeix e a doUar ]'>er pound for transportation. lUit he 
di\erted from the proper destination, and tetehed up 
at Mormon Island, where he sold both team and i;-oods, 
and poeketed the proeeeds. lie next turned up at C'o- 
loma. Here he fell in with a (lerman. who was about 

Has \ (f/rr- 
w h o w a s 



to lea\ e tor 
lavd, and 
fond of dis- 
bulk\' purse 
with whieh 
to set the 
a b r o a d 
upshot was : 
missed his 
and his new- 
\v a s a e - 
in a '' peo - 
eonvicted, 
tenced to a 
lashes, half 
at onee, and 




.=^ 



p 1 a \' 1 \\)i a 
of nuo"g'ets, 
he intended 
e r o w d s 
agape. The 
the (jerman 
n n ii" g c t s, 
made friend 
cused, tried 
pie's court,'' 
a n d s e n- 
h u n d r e d 
to be ^-iven 
the rest af- 



ter a week's resi')ite. WHien he came to us, he had just 
undero-one the last installment. From his raw and 
bleeding back, it was evident that the thong had been 
robusth- applied, and the victim vowed eternal ven- 
geance upon the merciless hand that did it. The fellow, 
however, with refreshing facetiousness, justified the 
deed, upon the ground that no such fine American gold 
should be allowed to be taken from the country I 



96 WHERE GOLD WAS FI^ST FOUND. 

Coloma, as is well known, is located on the South 
Fork of the American River, and is distinguished his- 
torically as the place where, on January 24, 1848, James 
W. Marshall, in examining the tail-race of the Sutter 
sawmill, made the gold discovery, which set the world 
ablaze, and was so far-reaching and momentous in its 
results. I saw the mill man)' times. It was of the old- 
fashioned, flutter-wheel, sash-saw model, ^ and was 
pounding away day and night while I knew it. It was 
situated a little below the town on an extensive bar, 
which, through many re-workings, has since been al- 
most wholly washed awa\'; and thus, through these en- 
croachments of the eager, unsentimental gold-seeker, 
the old mill, and the race below it, where the first piece 
of gold was picked up, ha\e long since disappeared. 
E\"en the exact site of the mill can no longer be point 
ed out. 

"Yet. the years may chase each other 

Down the rugged steeps of time. 
The world may lose its harmony, 

Life's song its merry rhyme; 
Hnt forever and forever 

The story of the mill 
And the man who dug the mill-race. 

Will linger with us still." 

Marshall's discover\' at the mill w as not, it appears, 
the result of mere accident. The water-wheel had 
been set too low, and the water was being let into the 
tail-race of nights to cut out the channel so as to free 
the wheel. It was Marshall's custom to walk along 
the race in the morning, after the water had been shut 

1 I have Ijeen at considerable pains to get an accurate picture of this mill, 
having had before me several cuts said to have been sketched on the spot from 
the original, among which is the print in "California Illustrated," by G V. 
Cooper, and a pencil sketch by C. B. Oillespie. I have also availed myself of 
suggestions frorn Gillespie, H. W. Bigler, St. George, Utah, and Azariah Smith, 



& ^s 












98 HOW THE DISCOVERY WAS MADE. 

off, SO as to orive the men directions in the work. On the 
day previous to the discovery, a section of bed-rock 
in the race, laid bare by the water, excited his curiosi- 
ty ; and, calling one of his men^ to him, he, after draw- 
ing- attention to this queer-looking rock, remarked that 
he believed there was gold thereabouts, this belief be- 
ing founded on the fact, he said, that he had noticed 
the "blossom of gold" ( quartz ) in the adjacent hills, 
and that he had read in some book that the presence 
of quartz was a sign of gold. vSo strong was he in 
this belief that he sent the man to the cabin for a pan, 
that he might make the test, by washing some of the 
sand and gravel from the tail-race. The test was un- 
successful ; but the failure did not satisfy Marshall. 
''Well,''' he said to his attendant, "we will hoist the 
gates tonight and let in all the water we can, and to- 
morrow morning we will shut it off and come down 
here, antl I helie\e we v\'ill find gold or some other 
mineral." .\s he was a rather eccentric sort of man, 
no heed was paid to this seeming whim. But Marshall 
was in a different frame of mind. Tlu' next morning 
at an unusuallv earlv hour some one was heard pound- 
ing at the mill. It was Marshall. ''There was at the 
time a carpenter's work-bench standing in the mill- 
yard; a little way from it was a saw-pit for whip-saw- 
ing lumber; also men at work in the mill-yard fram- 

Manti, L'tah. the latter two n{ whom assisted Marshall in building the mill. 
The conspicuous forebay in the Nahl design, as printed in "'The Century," ap- 
pears to he merely an embellishment by the artist; for the water entered the 
mill from the front or east side, and not from the right or north side. 

1 This man was James S. Hrown, whose ])ortrait is printed on page 95, and 
the facts narrated down to the iiiiotation "There was at the time a carpenter's 
work-bench," etc., Iglean from his interestingpaniphlct entitled. "California: An 
Authentic History of the First Find." j>uhlislie(l by himself. Salt Lake City, Utah. 



THE HANGTOWN CAMP. 99 

in^ timbers and hewing with a broadaxe. Near the 
tlutter-wlieel there was a large bowlder to be blasted 
out. I was at the drill preparing to put in a blast of 
powder when Marshall came up from the tail-race car- 
r3ing his slouch hat in his arms, and, setting it on the 
work-bench, exclaimed: 'B03S, I belie\e I have found 
a gold mine.' At once the men gathered around, and 
sure enough in the top of his hat, the crown knocked in 
a little, was the pure stuff in small pieces or rather 
thin scales. All knew it was gold, although not one 
had ever seen the metal before in its natural state. "^ It 
was agreed on all hands that the discovery should be 
kept secret; but the news took wing in spite of all pre- 
cautions to the contrary. The public, however, were 
slow to believe, so that it was some time before the 
importance of the event came to be realized. 

The holidays found me at Hangtown, which took its 
suggesti\-e name from the circumstance that two men — 
a Frenchman and a Spaniard — were hanged here, for 
robbery and murder. The process was in pursuance 
of the usual miner's code, and occupied but twenty-four 
hours for its complete execution. The oak that did dut}- 
on the occasion may be seen in the annexed plate, be- 
tween two buildings, nearly opposite the ''El Dorado," 
from whose tall flag-staff a streamer is flying. In the 
fall of '50 the camp was the scene of another hanging- 
bee, the process being much more summary than that 
just mentioned. The subject was "Irish Dick," who 
killed a man across a gambling table in the "El Dora- 



1 This last quotation is from a letter by Henry W. Bigler to the author dat 
ed St. George, Utah, May 31, 1894.. See portrait and note, p. 93. 



THE VILT.AIN DANGT.RD IN THE AIR. 



lOI 



do." The crowd on the inside, in less time than it 
takes to tell it, seized the wretch and thrust him out 
tlie door to the (^uickl}' assembled crowd on the out- 
side, wdien a noose was put about his neck and he was 
hurried off to the most convenient tree. The other 
end of the rope was thrown over a limb and grasped 
bv a number of men, when the fellow was asked if he 
had anything to say. He coolly took a monte deck 
from his vest pocket, 'and began to shuffle the cards, 
saying, "If an3'bod3' wants to buck, I'll give him a lay- 
out." A quick haul upon the cord, and a graceless, 
conscienceless villain dangled in the air.^ 

1 'Dick" was brought across the plains the previous season by one of my 
partners, antl was a slim strippling of about twenty, thin visaged, and with 
large, uneven teeth, and a slight Irish accent. He drew a dirk upon rae as we 
were going up street one evening because of some pleasantry of mine; but I had 
no thought then that he was capable of murder. 



^y ,^/^^r ^ 




VI. 
THE PICK AND SHOVEL AGAIN. 



w I ANGTOWN was, at this period, one of the 
1^1 most important mining camps in the State. 
I I Claims were Hmited to fifteen feet square; so 
I the miners could not work long in a place. 

^ Two men usuall}' formed the ephemeral min- 

ing partnerships, as by the methods of mining then in 
vogue that number could generally work together 
the most profitably. The best diggings I "struck^' 
about here were on Hangtown Creek, a half mile be- 
low town, where my partner and I took out, for awhile, 
with a long-tom,^ fifty to a hundred dollars apiece per 
day. We also found good mines in Kelsey's Canyon, 
in which the gold was mainly flax-seed shaped, and of 
a very uniform and beautiful variety. The largest 
piece I ever found was in a '' gutted " gulch, in the 
grease-wood hills, westward of town. Here, with the 
first stroke of the pick, I raked out of the clay an ounce 
chunk, and with the next stroke, one weighing two and 
a quarter ounces.^ This was certainly encouraging 

1 The first loag-tom I saw was in the spring of '50. 

2 Gold was usually found in small particles, buc it ranged from the size of 
almost impalpable powder up to verj' large nuggets. In September. 1871, a 
piece worth $6,000 was taken out by Bunker ^i: Co., in the State of Oregon, 



EXTRAVAGANT RUMORS. I03 

for a beginning; but there was no water near, and the 
beginning proved also to be well-nigh the end. But, 
as a rule, mining, even at that day, eould not, by any 
means, be reekoned a protitable employment. A lady 
who kept boarders in Hangtown, in the winter of '49- 
50, informed me that very few of her boarders paid or 
were able to pay; and one of these boarders, who ap- 
plied himself very diligently, owned to me that he had 
not taken out as much as a quarter of an ounce on any 
day during the winter.^ 

The diggings where the large nuggets were found, 
and where there were several cabins, were entirely de- 
serted at the time of our operations there; as was also 
Kelsey's Canyon. The notion generally entertained 
during the winter of '49-50, was that higher up in the 
Sierra lay in situ the original "big lumps," of which 
the flakes and other small particles lower down were 
but the float or waste. Many were the extravagant 
yet fully credited rumors whispered about from friend 
to friend as to the pound-a-day diggings that, up 
there, invitingly awaited the advent of spring to open 
up their treasures. Accordingly, when that longed- 
for time came round, the real mining belt was almost 
wholly deserted, in the stampedes for those fancied 
ophirs. My partner and I, not to be left napping un- 
der such circumstances, were among the very first to 
break from this camp. We went by the Carson emi- 

which is perhaps the largest specimen ever found on the Pacific Coast; but we 
have an account ot" much larger finds in the Australia mines, one diecovered in 
the DonoUy district, in 1869, weighing 2.520 oz., and worth $48,0O(). 

1 Doubtless many old miners would agree with Hrigham Young in the decla- 
ration he made to the Colfax party, in 1865, "that every dollar of gold taken 
out ia the United States had cost one hundred dollars." 






















NEAR THE BaCKBONE OF THE SIERRA.— (ADAPTED FROM "PACIFIC TOURIST." 




A WIT.D-GOOSE CHASE. T05 

grant trail as far as Leek Springs, at which point we 
found ourselves up among the branches of the stately 
sugar pines, on the crust of the snow, which was so 
solidly packed that our horse^s hoofs made just indent- 
ation enough to make it comfortable traveling. At 
this point the backbone of the Sierra was in plain view 
and apparently but a few miles away. Swathed in 
winter snows of untold depth, as it now was, this great 
divide wore a most ominous and forbidding aspect, 
and sent a shudder of awe through the soul as we con- 
templated its awful majesty : 

"With foundations seamed and knit. 

And wrought and bound by golden bars, 
Sierra's peaks serenely sit 

And challenge heaven's sentry-stars." 

Well, it was on the South. Fork of the American Riv- 
er, or on a tributary thereto, somewhere in this region, 
that we were to find a party of miners that had been 
rolling out the pound chunks the whole winter long. 
That is to say, it had conlidingl}' come to our ears 
that some one had affirmed that he had seen a man 
who had heard another man say that he knew a fellow 
who was dead sure that he knew another fellow who, 
he was certain, belonged to a party that were thus 
shoveling up the big chunks^ — or something to that ef- 
fect. We now, of course, knew that we had been 
hoaxed; 3^et it was, doubtlessly, all round a case of — 

"Themselves deceiving and themselves deceived." 

But our frank and earnest avowals as to the facts made 
not the slightest impression upon the party after part}' 
we met on our return, that, having got wind of our 
slipping away, were on our track, determined upon 



lo6 AN ERRONEOUS THEORY. 

sharing in our supposed "good thing." They became 
convinced only when they saw the imprints of our 
horse^s hoofs in the snow where we had turned about 
from our fool's errand. And, forsooth, such is about 
as rational a foundation as miners** stampedes have usu- 
ally had from that day to this. For, be it known, that 
of all men the gold-miner is proverbially the readiest — 

"To swallow gudgeons ere they're catched, 
And count the chickens ere they're hatched."! 

Another notion then widely prevalent was, that, as 
the river-bars were rich in auriferous deposits, the riv- 
er-beds should be much more so, especially in the 
deep-water stretches between the rapids. Hence, in 
the summer of 1850 a large percentage of the miners 
clubbed together to turn the various rivers of the min- 
ing-belt from their beds, at the more favorable points, 
by means of canals, or flumes, or both, as necessity re- 
quired. One such compan}^ was organized to drain 
the South Fork at Spanish Bar, opposite Placerville. 
The conditions here, as the theory ran, were precisely 
what was desired. Here was the deep-water stretch, 
and into this emptied the Hangtown and the Kelsc}' 
Canyons, both of which were very rich. On the 

1 The Sun River stampede in Montana, in the fall of 1865, may be cited as a 
typical instance. One McClellan had discovered a very rich gulch on the west 
side of the Range, and had thus acquired considerable fame locally as a pros- 
pector. He was afterward, at the time above-mentioned, leaving Helena with 
two mules packed with provisions A friend accosted liim as to his destination. 
"Oh;" he replied soto voce and with a sly twinkle of the eye. "I've got as good a 
thing out here as I want, this winter," The news of this incident got abroad, 
and touched off the percussion gold-htinters within reach, occasioning the most 
notable stampede of the country. When the rush was well under way, a tremen- 
dous blizzard came up, causing much and intense suflering. Four men were 
brought back frozen stark dead, and many had limbs or other members more 
or less seriously frozen. Now, it turned out that all McClellan had meant by 
his pleasantry was that somewhere out in the Sun River wilds, he had put up 
a cabin for the winter and taken to himself an Indian wife. 



THE DIGGERS DIGGING. I07 

Strength of this favorable prospect, a large force of 
men spent the season in turning the river and pumping 
out the hole, when, to their great surprise and disap- 
pointment, but a few hundred dollars were realized, 
and this was at the moutli of the Hangtown Canyon, 
where evidently it had been but recently deposited. 
Such, generally, was the outcome of similar ventures 
that season; so gener- 
ally, indeed, that the 
phrase, "I've been 
damming the river,*" 
became a curreiit by- 
word, as the usual ex- 
planation given that 
fall by unlucky min- 
ers for their season's 
failure. The "float" ' 
gold, as was ultimate- 
ly found out, lodges 
on the riffles, or rap- 
ids, and not in the 
deep holes, some hint of which I might have taken 
from my experience as a neophyte in wrestling witli 
the pot-hole. In the gravel drift of the river-bars, the 
"pay-dirt" usually lay in "streaks" corresponding to 
the several strata as these had been successively super- 
posed one upon another. 

The Indians were frequent visitors at the mining 
camps in this section. While the placers were plenty, 
shallow, and easil}- worked, they did a good deal of 

1 Adapted from Mark Twain's "Roughing It," by permission of American 
Publishing Co., Hartford, Conn. See Appendix, p. iv. 




^^"-;il 



THE "emigrant's" FIRST APPEARANCE 
IN THE DIGGINGS. -1 



io8 



THE NOBLE SAVAGE. 



spasmodic mining. The pan and the wooden bowl — 
the batea (bah-ta-a) of the Mexicans — were the imple- 
ments they chiefly used for the purpose. A half doz- 
en or more of them would dig and wash diligently for 
two to three hours, when they would hie themselves 
off to the nearest store or trading-post to spend the 

proceeds. At 
the "Mountain- 
eer's Home/' we 
had a frequent 
customer, who 
♦-^^ pompously point- 
ed to himself as 
"me Jim, Alcal- 
de,"^ and who 
rarely missed an 
opportunity to 
impress upon us 
the dignit}' of his 
personage. Jim 
evinced a decid- 
ed partiality for 
bright calico shirts — at five dollars apiece; for which 
he appropriated the bulk of the earnings of himself and 
his handful of followers. These shirts he would put 
on, one after another, until he had perhaps a half doz- 
en telescoped over his person at once, never taking the 




"the noble savage." 



1 Al-cal-de is the Spanish equivalent for Justice of the Peace; but under the 
lax judicial methods of the Mexican regime, the functions and powers exercised 
by the officials bearing this title were often little, if any, short of absolute. 
Hence, to the unrefined Digger perception, as with Jim, alcalde came to be sy- 
nonymous with "chief," or headman ot the tribe or community. For full his- 
torj' of this office .see Shinn's "Mining Camps," New York, 1885. 



A FRIGHTENED SQUATTER. 



109 



trouble to remove or to cleanse the ones he had previ- 
ously successively donned. Thus arrayed, he was ful- 
1}' satisfied to allow the rest of his august figure to re- 
main exposed in its natural grace and symmetry. Oc- 
casionail}', enough dust 
would be dug out to lay 
in a sack of flour, in which 
case the lord would mount 
the purchase — a hundred 
pounds — on the back of his 
spouse, and then stalk 
along in her rear with true 
savage self-complacency 
as she trotted home with 
the burden. 

One da}', the ordinary 
routine of the Placerville 
camp was broken by the 
appearance on the street 
of an elderly, lean, angu- 
lar man, who from his 
wagon proceeded to make 
a speech and exhibit sev- 
eral ugly gun-shot wounds 
about the groin. He soon 
drew a crowd around him. 
It appeared, according to 
his story, that he had been a participant in the armed 
collision which had taken place the day previous be- 
tween the squatters and the anti-squatters at Sacramen- 
to, and in which several men had been killed and wound- 




MODERN DIGGER BELLE, IN CEREMONIAL 
COSTUME. (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.) 



no DISAPPOINTED AND DISHEARTENED. 

ed. The speaker belonged, he said, to the squatters' 
side, and had been attacked and driven off by an armed 
posse, from whose vengeance he escaped only by plung- 
ing into the American River and swimming across be- 
yond their reach. But he had not quit the field, he de- 
clared, without having given his assailants a valiant 
fight; whereupon some one in the crowd sang out, 
"What is your name?" "My name is Allen," he re- 
sponded. "You must be some relation to old Ethan 
Allen," another spectator suggested. "Yes:" answered 
the speaker, "I am a grand-son of the hero of Ticonder- 
oga." But, notwithstanding this avowal as to "the 
great Jehovah" blood in his veins, he was, obviously, 
still very much frightened. He had traveled all night 
to make sure of getting out of harm's way, and he now 
appealed to his hearers to protect him. At this, of 
course, everybody present shouted, "We will, wc 
will!" and so the episode ended. ^ 

Placerville was the first point in the mines reached 
on the principal overland trail in the season of 1850, 
and, early in July, the stream of emigrants from this 
direction began to pour into the camp. The first ar- 
rival was a party froin my own town in Indiana — the 
Fowler brothers — who had made the journey from the 
Missouri River with an ox team in ninety days. The 
rush that season was very great, and soon every ave- 
nue was filled with the new recruits. A more disap- 
pointed and disheartened lot of mortals than they were 

1 This collision occurred on August 14. 18r>0, Charles Robinson, the squat- 
ter leader, and later Governor of Kansas, being ainonj; the wounded. The con- 
tention Ijetween the squatters and the anti-squatters, which was a long and 
serious element o( disturbance in the State is treated of at considerable length 
in Royce's "History of California." 



A ULOOxMY OUTLOOK. 



I I I 



could scarcely be imagined. They believed, as did 
many of the old-timers also, that the diggings had been 
worked out, and that the whole country had collapsed 

into utter ruin. The 
gloomy outlook was 
f u r t h e r aggra\'ated 
by the prevalence of 
much sickness, which, 
at this camp, was ow- 
ing largel}' to the 
stagnant, polluted wa- 
ter, which was mostly 
obtained from the 
abandoned prospect- 
holes, of which the 
streets were full. I 
was myself taken with 
typhoid fever sev- 
Jl cral weeks prior to 
the tirst arrivals over- 
land, and did not re- 
cover so as to be able 
to work till this camp 

WOMAN'S CINCTUKE, HOOPA INDIAN MAKE. — 1 .| |-j (^ t ll C UCi O"hbor lU O" 

sections had become overcrowded with the newcomers. 
An ounce- a visit was the usual fee for medical attend- 
ance. 




1 Reproduced bs' permission from Smithsonian Report for 1886, Part 1. 

2 The current trade value of gold dust up to September, 1848, was $12 per 
oz., at which date the merchants of San Francisco, in a public meeting, nxed 
the value at $16 per oz , and, though the actual average value, as determined 
by assays, was not far from $18 per oz. the rating established by the merchants 
was universally accepted as the standard while' I was in California, and per- 
hajjs for years thereafter. Sec Hittell. "History of California." 



112 OFF FOR THE TRINITY. 

In the latter part of August, Good arrived in Pla- 
eerville from the Trinity diggings. He had eonie to 
this eongested hibor market to employ men to work 
for his tirm — Brown, Pfouts & Co.— in that remote sec- 
tion, where the evil effects from the emiij^ration had 
not been, and were not likely to be, seriously felt. He 
soon engaged about thirty men, at three dollars per 
day and board. When we were going up the Sacra- 
mento Valley, the fall before, we met hundreds of men 
coming from these same mines, cursing them as utter- 
ly worthless; yet, as a matter of fact, the yield here 
was about as good as anywhere else in California. 
And thus we found it everywhere — some coming, some 
going; some praising, some damning. 

Through Good's representations, I accompanied 
him,^ driving an ox team as far as Shasta, which was 
the end of the wagon road in that direction, and 
which was but a few miles from the scene of our first 
mining exploitations. We had now to pack the rest 
of the distance, some seventy miles, to the head of 
the Big Can3'on on the Trinity, where we proposed 
to locate till the setting in of winter. Upon arriving 
at our destination, I at once struck ounce diggings, 
on a small sandy bar, near the river's edge; and one 
afternoon I scooped up eighty dollars out of the water, 
from the top of a bed of loose sand, inside of an aban- 
doned coffer-dam. The gold was all tine scales, and 
was ob\iouslv a cpiite recent deposit. Kendrick and 
D. K. Wall bailed out the water while I did the wash- 



1 The two Wall brothers, I) K. and John D., of South Bend, Ind., and B. F. 
Kendrick, of Rochester, Ind., were also of the party as traveling companions. 



ABOUNDING WITH SALMON. II3 

ing in a rocker, for wliich I paid cacli at tlic rate of ten 
dollars per day. 

The Trinity abounded with salmon, l^^very niorn- 
in^*- there was a school of them inside the coffer-dam 
near by; and, with a few moments' work closing up 
the mouth of the dam with cobble stones, the tish were 
easily caught by the gills and tail, with the hand, as 
with their heads poked into the openings of the stones, 
they were wriggling to escape. I thus supplied my- 
self with a su- 

perabundance «-^^>, '-_s=^^^^^=^ 

of this ''poor 
man's meat."" 
On one occa- 
sion I saw a 
large speci- 
men wriggling 
itself spasmod- 
ically to cross 
a riffle in the 
North Fork, 
where the wa- 
ter w^as scarce- 
ly deep enough to con er half its body. I crippled it 
with a stone, when it whirled over on its side and w^as 
floating away, as I caught it. Many were badly bruised 
from contact with the rocks when flinging themselves 
into the air in forcing the rapids. I saw one crazed in 
this WAV shoot across the river twice, the last time 
landing at nearly full length on the bank, where it was 
secured. Frequently, too, they were seen with one or 




I'KOSPECTING IN THE TRINITY RKGION. 



114 DESERTED CAMPS. 

more lamper ells clinging to their bodies. Indeed, so 
many perished in various ways that the Sacramento 
River, in 1849, was said actually to smell from the 
pollution. 

In the course of a month or two, the approach of 
winter caused an almost total abandonment of the river. 
One day, I went down through the canyon to the Big 
Bar. This had been the largest mining camp on the 
river; but I now found it totally deserted. The uten- 
sils, implements, and camp debris of various sorts, not 
excepting bottles, were strewn about the brush shan- 
ties as if the occupants had decamped in a panic. 
Weaverville was the only camp west of the Coast 
Range that bore any semblance of a town, and to this 
point, as a winter quarters, flocked about everybody 
that intended to remain over winter in that region. I 
clung to my claim a fortnight or so, after the river be- 
low me had been wholly deserted, and when the near- 
est civilized habitation above me was six miles away, 
at Canyon Creek, where a sort of store was kept, and 
where, of Sundays, I obtained my week's supplies. On 
either side of the river, for practically an illimitable dis- 
tance, the wild beasts and savages still held their pris- 
tine sway. It was a very imprudent thing for me to 
do; but there had been no trouble with the Indians up 
to that time, and I did not realize the danger to which 
I was exposed. The spot, too, was not at all a blithe- 
some or an inspiring one; for all about me sharp, 
cragged mountains pressed one upon another, while 
immediately behind my little tent a sheer mountain 
wall, dark and frowning with its heav}^ growth of firs, 



COMMLTNES WITH SOT.ITUDE. II5 

shut out the sun during- all but about three hours of 
the day. 

I, at length, followed the crowd to Wea\crville. 
Here, about a mile from town, between Ten Cent 
Gulch and East Weaver Creek, among the pines, I put 
up for myself an eight-by-twelve log cabin, with shake 
roof, and generous stick chimney. The mountain lions 
were very numerous in the vicinity, as their nightly 
serenades kept me constantly reminded; but, with a 




THE AUTHOR COMMUNES WITH SOLITUDE. 

strong door securely pinned, I felt amply assured 
against any undue intrusions on their part. I did hap- 
pen, however, on one occasion, to meet one of their 
lordships on a trail in the thick chaparral, east of town. 
I hardly need add that I was quite ready to yield him 
the right of way, had he not, through his superior nim- 
bleness, extended me that courtesy first. A 3^ouno- 
man, who had come from my count}- in Indiana, but 



ii6 



LOCATE ON reading's BAR. 



whom I had never met there, came to my cabin here 
sometime during the winter, claiming that he was not 
able to support himself because of a crippled back. 
He was a body-maker by trade, and was very glib in 
recounting his travels and experiences, perhaps in con- 
trast to my conscious rustic simplicity. I shared my 
mite with him for six to eight months, and as a re- 
ward he generously taught me to use tobacco. The 
camp was by no means a live one; so that the break- 
ing out of the Scott River excitement, toward the 
close of winter, was 
hailed as a timely 
relief, and it precip- 
itated a general 
rush from Weaver- 
ville thitherward.' 
Good happened to 
be in Weaverville 
with his pack-train 
at the time, and 
was employed to 
remove several stocks of goods from this point to 
Scott's Bar, for which service he received a dollar per 
pound, the distance being not far from a hundred miles. - 
I did not join in the exodus, but earl}- in the spring 
returned to the Trinity, now locating on Reading's 

1 Reproduced from Roosevelt's "The Wilderness Hunter," by permission of 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, publishers, New York and London. 

2 Good's firm also located on this bar where they kept a trading-post and 
carried on mining, and where Good, in a letter, now before me, dated Sacramen- 
to, June 1, 1851, writes that he had the "bigpest hick" mining he had had in 
California. His partner, Joseph H. Brown, took out "near $5,0()0" in two 
days, this including a nvigget, "clear of quartz — nothing but virgin gold," and 
"worth 9.t $16 per og. $3,X4.0." 




HEAD OF A CALIFORNIA LION.— 1 



A BRILLIANT VENTURE. 



117 



Bar, where 1 found the digginf^^s pretty uniform and 
fairly good. One miner, a Missourian, assured me as 
to liis claim here, that he "could make an ounce a day 

d d easy by working d d hard." Some claims 

paid much better than this, but the average per day to 
the man was perhaps not far from ten dollars. The 
pay-dirt was borne by hand to the river, where it was 
washed in cradles, or rockers. With the exception of 
one or two wheel-barrow^s, the Holland yoke, with 
buckets made of ten-gallon casks sawed in two, was 
the contrivance used for this purpose. This process 
was slow and laborious, and became more and more 
so as the claims were worked back from the water. 
Besides, the carrying of the heavy buck- 
ets produced physical distortion, mak- 
ing one r o u n d -s h o u 1 d e r e d in a short 
time. In view of this unsatisfactory 
state of things, a party of us conceived 
the project of carrying the water to the 
dirt, instead of the dirt to the water, as 
was being done. A ditch from Weaver 
Creek to the bar would solve the prob- 
S'^^^ l<^'m. The idea was entirely feasible. 
The ditch need not be more than a mile 
or so long; the excavating could be done wnth the 
pick and sho\el; the volume of water was more than 
ample; and as for head, it was only a question as to 
how far we should ascend the creek whether we 
should ha\e barely enough or a thousand feet to spare. 
With this encouraging outlook, we began the work. 
The senior member undertook the part of eng-ineer. 




Il8 ANOTHER DIGGER RAID. 

and constructed what he called a "water-level" for 
the purpose. After a month or more of diligent toil 
with pick and shovel in the broiling sun, we turned in 
the water. What was our disappointment and cha- 
grin upon this test to tind that our ditch had been laid 
out wrong end first — that the mouth was about two 
feet higher than the head ! A bountiful catch of the 
worthless lamper eel, coupled with an equally copious 
outpouring of irreverent interjections, was the sum to- 
tal that the most of us realized out of the enterprise. 

A Digger raid was the next notable event of the 
camp. All the horses of the vicinity, to the "unlucky" 
number of thirteen, were herded by two men at a stip- 
ulated price per head, and were carefully looked after 
during the day and closely corralled at night. The 
corral was situated just across the river, opposite the 
head of the bar. As a further precaution against the 
well-known partiality of the Diggers for equine feasts, 
the tent in which the men lodged was pitched imme- 
diately by the only entrance to the enclosure. Yet, 
in spite of all this care, the men awoke one luckless 
morninu: to find the bars let down and not a hoof in 
sight. The cause was at once divined — the Diggers 
had got in their work. A party from the bar were 
soon on the trail. The thieves, it was found, had set 
out with their booty to the eastward, but after awhile 
veered around to the westward. Whatever may have 
been the motive for taking this circuitous, out-of-the- 
way course, whether to divert suspicion from them- 
selves at the expense of others of their kind, or to em- 
barrass and elude pursuit, it was a ruse they had long 



Several diggers bite tHe dust. 



it9 



successful!}^ practised. In this instance, however, it 
failed to subserve either of these purposes. At a dis- 
tance of about thirty miles by the route taken, over a 
sinuous, wearisome mountain trail, the marauders were 
completely surprised at their rancheria (ran-che-re-a) 
and several of their number made to bite the dust. A 
deep, hidden ravine across their front partially foiled 
a charge upon their position, and enabled the rest to 
escape. One horse only, and that the sorriest of the 
lot, was recovered. The sliced carcasses of the oth- 




CALIFORNIA WOLF.— (REDK AWN FKOM C. NAHL, IN "HUTCHINS' CALIFORNIA 
MAGAZINE," 1858.) 

ers w^ere spread out upon poles to cure; for the wild 
Digger of that day made no other use of the horse 
than for food. A hurried reconnoisance of the locality 
disclosed signs of numerous abandoned rancherias, at 
all of which fragments of horses and cattle were strewn 
about, the latter attesting to the energy and persist- 
ence with which the Diggers had carried on their dep- 
redations upon the whites, and that too (except in the 
present instance) without detection or molestation in 
any way. 



VII. 
DIGGER VENGEANCE -HUMBOLDT BAY. 



nNOTHER collision of a somewhat more se- 
rious nature with the same band of sav- 
ages, followed close upon the Hay Fork 
affair, just detailed. The party, on their 
return from the Digger horse-thief expedition, reported 
that the section they had visited bore excellent aurif- 
erous indications, and that from appearances it had 
never before been penetrated by the whites. Accord- 
ingly, a party of ten of us was at once made up to test 
those indications; and, horses being now a rare com- 
modity at the bar, we took the necessary traps togeth- 
er with five days' rations, upon our backs, and set out 
in high spirits for the promised new El Dorado. Sev- 
eral of the former party were among our number, to 
pilot the way, and of course to share in our expected 
good fortune. Strangely enough, our only thought 
was of diggings, not of Diggers. Two rifles, a shot- 
gun, and perhaps a half dozen Allen "pepperboxes"^ 

1 Mark Twain thus not inaptly discourses of this make-believe weapwn: ' To 
aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a feat which was 
probablj' never done with an "Allen" in the world. . . . Sometimes all its 
six barrels iwould go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the re- 
gion roundabout, except behind it. He might have added that "sometimes" 
none of the "six barrels would go off at all." 



A SCENE OF PRIMEVAL BEAUTY. 



121 



comprised our equipment of weapons offensive and de- 
fensive, all told. We made our first camp where we 
first struck the Hay Fork. Our savory repast of 
bread, bacon, and coffee was soon disposed of, when 
each man rolled up in his blankets for the night, utter- 
ly oblivious as to any possible danger. The next morn- 
ing, bright and early, our frugal breakfast was over, 
and we were pushing our way down the stream. Pres- 
ently, the site of the encounter with the Diggers a 

few d a }' s 
before was 
pointed out 
to us on the 
opposite 
side of the 
r i \' e r, all 
now silent 
and lifeless 



as the grave. 
But we still 
took no foi^e- 
b o d i n g s 
from the sit- 




6''j:J''''^; 










CALIFORNIA LYNX. — (REDRAWN FROM C.NAHL, IN "HUTCHINS' 
CALIFORNIA MAGAZINE," 185S, 



nation. We were delighted with the prospect that 
opened up before us. The mountains swung away 
from the stream to the right and in front, leaving a 
space of se\'eral thousand acres intervening. This 
space was comparatively open and level, and was 
carved into a series of gentle, grass-clad undulations, 
which here and there sloped away into rich, alluvial 
bottoms, and through which, at frequent intervals, 



122 A DIGGER HORNET'S NEST. 

bright, sparkling rivulets came plashing down from 
their mountain sources. The general surface was 
sparsely dotted with low, heavy-topped oaks, while 
the higher points were crowned with dark-green tufts 
of firs and pines, the whole being bordered about by 
sombrous, massive mountains, as if to complete the 
picture. We had so long been cooped up in the nar- 
row mountain confines that we now felt that we had 
room to breathe full and free once more. Yet, withal, 
how inscrutuable seemed the order of Providence, that 
the stolid, "untutored" Diofg-er should until now alone 
have been privileged to look upon this scene of prime- 
val beauty, one of the masterpieces of the great Ar- 
tist! Thus, ages upon ages, — 

"Summers and winters came and went, 
Bringing no change of scene; 
Unresting, unhasting, and unspent, 
Dwelt Nature here serene." 

But we had little leisure for indulging in the aesthetic 
or the sentimental, and were soon scattered out among 
the gulches, intent upon the more prosaic business in 
hand. I had wandered away from the rest of the part}' 
perhaps a quarter of mile, when I was startled by an 
unearthly noise bursting upon my ears. Glancing up, 
my eyes fell upon a Digger in uncomfortable proxim- 
ity to where I was standing, and a further glance be- 
yond revealed a dark, swarming mass of redskins on 
a mountain bench, not more than a half mile away. 
Their wild, frenzied whoops, yells, and contortions left 
no doubt as to their animus. I paused for no further 
hints. On the contrary, never before in my life, did I 
so thank my stars for suppleness of joint, lightness of 




CHARGING AND COUNTERCHARfilNG. I 23 

heel, and length of reach as I now did till 1 rejoined my 
companions. 1 found them hastily consultinii^ as to 
what should be done. The unanimous Noice was for 
attack, and we at once charged at double-cjuick upon 
the savages. They, with a like celerit}', scampered 
up the mountain side. Pursuit, we thus saw, would 

be futile. Nor would 
it be prudent to re- 
main where we were. 
The position was dis- 
advantageous and un- 
tenable. Moreover, 
the traditional predi- 
lection of the redskin 
for midnight scalps, 
roasts, and the like 
now flitted athwart 
our visions. We, 
therefore, decided to 
retrace our steps to a 
more secure position. 
But, on our facing 
about for this pur- 
pose, the Diggers 
faced about upon us. 
We now held another moment's consultation, the re- 
sult being that we turned upon them; and again they 
fled as before. This sort of charging and counter- 
charging was repeated once or twice more, when we 
abandoned the child's play, and proceeded Anally to 




women's caps.-l hoopa make. 
(see note, p. 70). 



1 Drawn from speciinins in a collection belonging to the author. 



124 ^ LITTLE WARM WORK. 

withdraw. In doing this, we turned the point of an 
open ridge that lay across our course. No sooner had 
we reached the opposite side of this than the Indians, 
emboldened by our retreat, swept across the bottom 
we had just vacated, and came stringing along the 
crest of the ridge upon our flank, now supplementing 
their demoniacal yells and gyrations with volley after 
volley of arrow-shots. But a vigorous use of our few 
pieces kept the pusillanimous horde well at bay. We 
had to cross several deep ravines, where, as a precau- 
tion against the savages descending upon us while we 
were thus disadvantaged, our part}^ divided, one half 
in turn guarding on the bank while the other half made 
the passage. But presently an inward trend of the 
bluffs brought the enemy within effective arrow-range, 
when for a moment there was warm work. The Hy- 
ing missiles fairly streaked the air. Zip! zip! zip! 
they stuck in the ground among us and about us, their 
feathered ends quivering in the air. In quick succes- 
sion, a hat-brim was pierced, an arm grazed, a leg per- 
forated, a foot wounded. We scarcely dared look up 
lest the face or an eye be struck. A squad of the Dig- 
gers were skulking along in our rear, to recover 
the spent arrows. These now likewise pressed close 
upon us, skipping from clump to clump of chapparal 
to cover their approach. Several of our men began 
to waver. One turned to fly; but "Kentuck's" rifle, 
coupled with a vigorous admonition, brought this de- 
linquent back to his senses and into the ranks. We 
well knew what panic meant, and this nerved us for 
the worst. Fortunatel}', at this critical juncture, we 



WE REACH SHELTER I 25 

were just entering an open circular space, where the 
distance from the bluffs assured us comparative safety. 
Near the centre of this space, stood a large lone pine, 
with wide-spreading and low-drooping branches. We 
hastened to this cover, where we stationed out pickets, 
and threw up around the tree a little earthwork, the 
crown of which we stuck thickly with chapparal to 
break or ward off arrow-shots. For we had not the 
slightest doubt that we should be stormed that night, 
if not before. This spot was, in fact, the very one we 
had in mind when we began our retreat. It was well, 
too, that this was so close at hand, for the man with 
the dart in his foot declared upon reaching the place 
that he could go no farther. When we began exca- 
vating, the Indians looked on for a few moments si- 
lently and queeringly, as if wondering whether some 
of our number had been killed and were being buried. 
But, when our real purpose dawned upon them, they 
broke forth with a vehemence greater, if possible, than 
before, in a prolonged and frantic effort to frighten us 
from our shelter. The squaws and children, from first 
to last, seemed to outvie the bucks in their demon-like 
performances. A pebble about the size of a hen's egg 
struck the ground with a thud near where one of the 
men was shoveling. It must have been hurled with a 
sling from the bluffs, a distance of more than three 
hundred yards. These wild, furious demonstrations 
to dislodge us were repeated a number of times dur- 
ing the afternoon, but with gradual abatement of en- 
ergy and frequency, till near sunset, when the savages 
broke out afresh in a prolonged and terrific pandemon- 



126 FORT NECESSITY EFFECTIVE WEAPONS. 

iiim of their whoops and fantastic pranks. But, still 
failing of their end, they, to our great surprise and re- 
lief, now one by one tiled over the hills from view, 
and we s;iw them no more. At nightfall, one of our 
men, "Missouri Jim," volunteered to try to make his 
way to the bar for aid. It was certainly no trifling 
task — the running of that lonely twenty-flve-mile gant- 
let, infested as it was by wild beasts and hostile sav- 
ages. But "Jim" — a Wisconsin bo}', b}' the way — 
was equal to the emergency; and the next afternoon 
a ringing shout went up from our little breastwork, as 
we espied about sixty of our friends with several horses 
file toward us through the gap of the divide. The 
country was now scoured for Diggers ; but, aside from 
a superannuated squaw with a basketful of arrow- 
points, not a Digger appeared to view. Our little 
earthwork was thenceforward remembered as "Fort 
Necessity."^ 

The distance between us and the Indians when they 
did their most effective work was stepped the next day, 
and found to be two hundred and fifty paces. The ar- 
rows were elevated and discharged from a position 
considerably above us, which partly accounts for their 
long range. The leg-wound was mine. The outer 
and feathered end of the arrow was quivering with a 
sort of rotary motion when I tirst observed it, and I 
instantl}^ whisked it out, casting it away at the same 
time. The arrow was driven with such force as to 
cut through and through, perforating the pants-leg and 

1 D. K. Wall, of Denver, Col.; A. B. I.iles.of Koswcll, N. Mexico; J. N. LauRh- 
lin and W. S. Robinson, of Humboldt County, Cal., are the only survivors of 
this relief party at present known to me. 




l?^«5»'^^ 







.... ]vm-^- 






' ', I 










V V u^ 






128 



A SERIOUS WOUND. 



the high boot-leg twice 




In the other case, the arrow 
entered the foot just below 
the ankle, through the eye- 
seam of the hard, heavy 
grain-tanned boot, and fol- 
lowed around the bone of the 
foot till the point struck the 
boot -sole on the opposite 
side, the body of the dart 
lodging among the delicate 
muscles of the bottom of the 
foot. The arrow-head was 
glass, and made a painful 
wound. We tried to extract 
it, but our butcher-knives 



had so long been 



strangers 



to the grindstone that the 
operation had to be deferred 
for more skilled hands and 
better instruments, both of 
which awaited us at the bar.^ 



PIQGBR BOWS AND ARROWS. -ii 



1 This man, one Willard, from Ohio, nev- 
er fully recovered from his wound; but, re- 
gaining the use of himself sufficiently, he 
engaged in packing supplies for the min- 
ers along the Trinity. Finally, however, 
he was missed, and search being made, 
his remains were found up in a dark ra- 
vine, where the Indians had murdered 
him, and stripped and horriblj' mutilated 
his body. 

2 Drawn from the originals in a collec- 
tion in my possession. Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 
are of the Modoc make, and were present- 
ed to me by George Graham, Eureka, Cal., 
who assured me that they were captured 
fri^ni "Captain Jack" and his band on the 
I,ava Beds, at the time General Canbj' 



ADIEU TO THE DIGGINGS. I 29 

I remained on the Trinity till sometime in Septem- 
ber, when a reeruiting otfieer appeared along- the ri\er 
enlisting volunteers for serviee against the Indians, un- 
der a call issued by the Governor. The miners of that 
region had acquired no very warm attachment for 
either the Diggers or the diggings; so that most of 
them were ripe for anvthing that promised a change. 
The inducement now offered was six dollars per day, 
the recruit to furnish his horse. About sixtv men on 
the Trinity, myself included, responded to the call; and, 
bidding a not over tearful adieu to the "dear, damned, 
distracted" diggings, we set out upon the extremely 
rough trail across range after range of mountains for 
Uniontown, Humboldt Bay, the place of rendezvous, 
the distance being some ninety miles. An incident oc- 
curred on this trip that may be of some interest from 
an ethnological point of view. The advance of our 
party, as we were strung along the trail, captured a 
young Indian woman. When I came up she was sit- 
ting on the ground beside the trail among a group of 
our men. She was evidently badly frightened. Look- 
ing up piteously into the faces of the brusque men 
about her, she milked from one of her breasts, thus 



•was killed. Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 are of the Hoopa make. One of the arrow-heads 
is of copper and the other of flint. The bows are of j'ew wood, the backs of 
which (as of all of the Digger type) are "covered with a lining of sinew so care- 
fully put on as to mimic the bark of wood, its thickness exactly fitted to the ex- 
igencies of the work to be done." Several kinds of stone, together with bottle- 
glass and (later) iron, steel and copper, were used for arrow-heads; and the ar- 
row-shafts are usually in two parts, that to which the point is attached beiug 
about four inches long. This make of bow and arrow is probablj- the best and 
most artistic known. Fremont, in his "Memoirs," speaking of the metal-point- 
ed arrows, says: "they could be driven to the depth of about six inches into a 
pine tree " Captain John G. Bourke makes substantially the same assertion. 
See Smithsonian Reports, Part I, 1886, and also same document for 1893, for 
£V full description of these weapons and the method of their manufacture, 



130 A NEW FIELD OF OPERATIONS. 

indicating; that she had a babe dependent upon her, 
and appealing, it would seem, to our humane instincts, 
a qualit}' of which the savage is credited with pos 
sessing very little, if any. Of course, she was allowed 
to go her way, unmolested. We carried no provisions, 
as we counted on supplying oursehes en route with 
abundance of game. Our rations turned out to be very 
short; for all that we killed was one deer, and that not 
until the last da}' late in the afternoon. Nor did we 
find things altogether to our liking after our arrival. 
The officer assigned to the command — Colonel J. H. 
Harper — was at the time engaged in a contest with the 
late General James W. Denver for a seat in the State 
Senate, and the canvass so engrossed his attention that 
he wholh" neglected his military engagements. The re- 
sult was, that, after remaining in camp several weeks, 
with no prospect of being enrolled, we disbanded, but 
not without visiting a profusion of epithets more vigor- 
ous than polite upon the head of the aforesaid Colonel. 
I remained at Uniontown ( now Areata ) that winter. 
This point was then a commercial center of considera- 
ble importance, being a seaport, and as such the seat 
of a quite heavy traffic with the outl3'ing mines. The 
sawmill had not yet been introduced in that section, 
and the frow and the whipsaw did duty as a substitute, 
the frow doing the major share of the work. The 
town la\' immediately at the edge of the great red- 
wood forests, and the timber \ielded so readily to the 
frow that the building material was chiefly manufac- 
tured in this way. I was occupied during most of the 
winter getting out siding, for which I received ten 




HISTORY OF HUMBOLDT COUNTY 



4^^^<:^^X.^ 



A-t^ 



[Kinnian was a noted pioneer and hunter of Humboldt Bay. He was a na- 
tive Pennsylvanian, and when (Buch)anan was elected President he conceived 
the idea of tnaking for that "public functionary" a (buck)horn chair When 
Kinman, as he here appears, arrived at Washington with his novelty, he was 
so greatly lionized that he followed up the experiment upon the incoming of 
every succeeding President down to Oarfield, whose early assassination pre- 
vented the delivery of the gift. He took much pride in showing the many flat- 
tering notices he had received from the press. In 1884., when I last saw him, he 
was keeping at the stage station on Table Bluffa sort of frontier curiosity snop, 
where he served a limited assortment of '■ tangle-leg " to the thirsty wayfar- 
ing callers. Among his curiosities, was a fiddle he had constructed in part from 
the forehead of his favorite mule, whose spirit he hoped to meet in the Beyond.] 



132 AN INDIAN SCARE. 

cents apiece. I made about a hundred pieces a day, 
after the timber was bolted. The axe, crosscut, frow, 
draw-knife, and jack-plane constituted my kit of tools 
for this purpose. 

The monotony of the winter was broken by a big 
fright from apprehended Indian hostilities. Two white 
men had been murdered on Eel River, presumably by 
the Indians. The deed and its supposed portent be 
came a subject of much public concern, and soon j^rew 
into a general apprehension that the Indians designed 
to wage a war of extermination upon the whites. Pub- 
lic meetings were held nightly to discuss the situation 
and to arrange for defense. It .was proposed to erect 
a stockade in the centre of the plaza for the safety of 
the women and children of nights and as a fortification 
in case of an attack. In the midst of the panic, a ca- 
noe containing several Indians was seen crossing the 
bay toward the peninsula. This incident was at once 
accepted as conclusive evidence that the Indians were 
collecting in that quarter preparatory to their general 
onslaught upon the settlers. That design, it was de- 
termined, should not be permitted to mature; it must 
be nipped in the bud. Accordingly, a whale-boat was 
brought into requisition ; and a party of a dozen or so 
of us, armed to the teeth, headed, with muffled oars 
and under cover of night, for the supposed hostile camp. 
The landing was made arid the rancheria surrounded 
before daylight, without our being discovered. One 
"Captain" Smith, an old, ponderous rustic, a typical 
"Kaintuck," was our commander, and he proved him- 
self to know about as much of military tactics as 



WANTON SAVAGERY. I33 

a Digger would know of belles-lettres. Before it 
was fairly dawn we were ordered to fire upon the mis- 
erable shacks. The surprise was complete, and as 
quickly as the affrighted Diggers could crawl out they 
scampered for the nearest brush. Several of them 
were shot down as they ran. One big buck was per- 
forated with sixteen bullets. 
/ a Ion Of heart-rend- 



dians were utterly 
their pitiable plight 
restrain our valor- 
ing down on the 
them of e\ erytliing 
any value, and then 
the torch. In ran- 
a h a 1 f -g r o w n boy 
away, and was 
little fellow begged 
life; but he was 
n o t w i t h s tanding. 
mately that these 
thought of attack- 
they had no connec- 
R i \' e r m u r d e r s ; 
over the anticipat- 




KI-WE-LAT-TAH, OR 
"COONSKIN."-! 



The women now set up 
ing moan. The In- 
defe useless; but 
did not in the least 
ous men from rush- 
huts, plundering 
that was deemed of 
putting the rest to 
sacking the lodges, 
was found hidden 
dragged out. The 
piteously for his 
coolly shot down. 
It turned out ulti- 
Indians h a d no 
ing the whites; that 
tion with the Eel 
and that the scare 
ed war of extermi- 



nation was based upon the veriest moonshine. The 
savages themselves, it may be added, could scarcely 



1 Redrawn from a photograph of a life-size painting owned by the late L. 
K. Vood, at Areata, Cal. Ki-wc-lat-tah was a noted chief of the Humboldt 
Bay Indians, whose massive and dignified ngure I saw many times, and who 
was one of the very few of his race that commanded the general respect and 
confidence of the whites. I am indebted to David VVood (son) for the photo- 
graph used. 



134 RAPID DEVELOPMENT. 

have exhibited a more fiendish rehsh for rapine and 
for blood than did the most of our men on this ocea- 
sion. I have ever sinee eongratuhited myself that up- 
on seeing the defenseless eondition of the Indians, 1 
had not the heart to join in this wanton destruetion of 
life and propert}'. 

Humboldt Bay was discovered by a party of wan- 




HEAP OF A GRIZZLY. -1 (SKE APPENDIX. P. XI.) 

daring miners from the Trinitv on December 20, i<S_i9, 
and the first vessel that plowed its waters made its en- 
trance on April 6, 1S50. This craft was the ''Laura 
Virginia," commanded by Lieutenant Douglass Ott- 
inger, of the United States Marines. It lies, by sea, 
two hundred and eighteen miles north of San Fran- 
cisco; is the best harbor between San Francisco and 

1 Reproduced from RooseveU's "The Wilderness Hunter," bj' permission of 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, publishers, New York and London. 



FLUSH TIMES. I 35 

the Columbia River; and is the principal outlet of the 
great redwood region, which is the finest forest in the 
world. The port was at first prized chiefly because 
of its eligible situation as a supply-point for the mines 
of Northwestern California; but the fine bodies of ara- 
ble lands about the bay and in the neighboring Eel 
River Valley were rapidly settled up and converted 
into farms. In the spring of 1852, the lumber indus- 
try began to be rapidly developed, no less than seven 
sawmills, several of them of large capacity, being put 
in full operation within a year. Eureka was the prin- 
cipal seat of this activity, as it has continued to be 
down to this day. The town grew with correspond- 
ing rapidity; many vessels came and went; the mills 
buzzed away day and night; and the woods there- 
abouts resounded with the axe and the "Whoa, hush!"^ 
of the logger. Everybody was busy; everybody had 
money ;^ everybody seemed contented and happy. Ev- 
ery logger owned his own timber claim and his own 
outfit, and thus exemplified the ideal condition that we 
are wont to assign to the ideal tiller of the soil. Those 
that worked for wages, as a large proportion in every 
civilized communit}' always must, received for ordi- 
nar}' labor from a hundred to a hundred and fifty dol- 
lars per month and found. The big trees were not 
utilized in that primitive era. Three to four yoke of 

1 The constantly recurring exclamation of the "Down-East" and the "Blue. 
Nose" (New Brunswick) ox-teamsters. 

2 Asastraw iiuiicativc of the prevailing Hush times it maybe mentioned that 
Seth Kinman, the noted hunter and antler chair-maker, and myself were ten- 
dered fifty dollars each to preside as the orchestrafor a Christmas ball at Un- 
iontown, in 1S52 Kinman's repertoire consisted mainly of an alternation ol 
"The Arkansaw Traveler" and "Hell on the Wabash," and mine was Httle more 
varied or pretentious. He responded. My conscience had not yet reached that 
degree of elasticity. 



GAME IN GREAT ABUNDANCE. I^'J 

oxen with the two-wheeled trucks sufficed to convey 
the logs to the tide-water sloughs, whence they were 
rafted to the different mills, Leeper, Liles & Compa- 
ny were credited with having cut and delivered the 
largest log that up to 1854 had been sawed at any 
mill on the bay. This was a redwood, fifty-two inches 
thick at the top end and thirty feet long; and this was 
sawed by Joseph Bean at the Martin White mill. 
There was then little demand for redwood lumber in 
the San Francisco market, the spruce and Oregon- 
pine being chiefly in request. Logs at the mills com- 
manded twelve dollars per thousand feet and lumber 
fort}' to fifty dollars. But forty years have wrought 
a wonderful change in the methods and the demands 
of this industry at Humboldt Bay. Redwood lumber 
is now the sort chiefly in demand, and no tree is so 
large as to be spared by the logger. The simple prim- 
itive trucks had long ago to be cast aside. The twelve- 
foot cross-cut saw, the donkey engine, a network of 
rolling-tackle, the skidded roadway, and a team of 
ten horses or twelve oxen constitute in part the elabo- 
rate and powerful appliances at present required. In 
another particular the change is also conspicuous. The 
timber lands are now mostly owned in large bodies, 
and the small independent logger with his own team 
and his own claim exists only as a pleasing memory. 

The native pastures in this section of the State, espe- 
cially in the Bald Hills back of the redwood belt, were 
remarkably fine, and, consequently, game, particularly 
bear, deer, and elk, ranged here in great abundance. 
Until 1853, the citizens depended wholly upon the 



138 THE GREAT REDWOOD FORESTS. 

hunters for fresh meat, that of the elk being the sort 
commonly supplied. Joseph Russ and M. Barr}' 
Adams — both lately deceased — were the first to open 
a meat market. That was in Eureka, in 1853. Barry 
presided at the block, and kept everybody about tov^n 
in good humor with his ever-ready fund of Celtic wit. 
At about the same time, D. D. Williams and myself 
introduced the pioneer milk ranch on the bay. We 
had thirteen milch cows, for which we paid three hun- 
dred dollars apiece. Fresh milk sold readily at a dol- 
lar and a half per gallon, and fresh butter at a dollar 
per pound. 

In 1853, the Government established a military 
post — Fort Humboldt — on the bay, of which Brevet 
Lieutenant-Colonel R. C. Buchanan was the command- 
ing officer, and which was garrisoned by two compa- 
nies of the Fourth United States Infantry. Several 
officers of the command rose to distinction in the late 
Civil War, among whom were Generals Grant and 
Crook, the latter the renowned Indian fighter. Grant 
was then a Brevet Captain and Crook a Lieutenant 
fresh from West Point. Of course, no one at that 
day dreamed of the latent potentialities of these subse- 
quentl}' great Captains. Grant was a quiet, reserved, 
unostentatious sort of man, whom nobody seemed to 
know any further than that he was "Captain Grant." 
He would sit on a store-box in Eureka alone for hours, 
attracting; little more attention than if he had been a 
dummy. 

The redwood forests have been incidentally noticed. 
These forests, over fi\e hundred thousand acres of 



ONLY GLIMMERINGS OF SUNLIGHT. I 1{() 

which lie in Humboldt County, are of so much im- 
portance to Humboldt Bay, to Northwestern Califor- 
nia, to the domestic improvement and tlie foreign com- 
merce of the Pacific Coast, as to merit separate and 
special mention. It is well known that the species 
{sequoia sempervireus) is found nowhere else than on 
the coast-belt of the north half of California. The 
appearance of these phenomena and the impression 
they produce upon the visitor have been thus aptly 
portra3^ed: "There are not, I think, morS impressive 
forests in the world. The land is actually darkened 
with them. You walk in some of them on a bright, 
sunshiny day as you might in the gloom and darkness 
of Alaskan forests. The impression that the atmo- 
sphere above is draped in fog, or is overspread with 
the cloud-darkness preceding rain, is constant, except 
where an occasional opening allows the sun to break 
through. Nowhere in our forests is sunshine more ac- 
ceptable or beautiful. It comes in long, yellow splint- 
ers, or open, clear bars, lighting up the dead-gray bark 
of the redwoods, the luminated cork-like bark of the 
pines, and showering ineffable beauty on the clear 
green undergrowth, particularly on the fleur-de-lis- 
shaped circles of immense ferns which everywhere in 
the shade cover the ground. The effect of this com- 
ing out into a break of sunshine from the gloom of the 
forests, is very peculiar. It seems out of place in its 
suddenness — as if one were instantaneously to emerge 
from the darkness and gloom of rain into clear sun- 
shine. Not a sound of bird, beast, or wind disturbs 
the silence, and even the most of tlie streams steal 



Age, strength, and beauty. 141 

quietly seaward. It is a place where siUjncc itself 
might feel the need of going on tip-toe. Fancy going 
mile after mile through trees one hundred and fifty to 
three hundred feet high packed as closel}', one some- 
times thinks, as trees can convenicntl}' stand, and 
breathe — where deep shade prevails, and where no 
noise, not even a leafy rustle or tree-shaken whisper is 
heard — and it can be imagined how different the feel- 
ing is than when in open ground and in full sunshine. 
After walking for half an hour thus, to have a break 
of sunshine slant in with its 3^ellow light and color il- 
lumination, the invariable feeling is that the sun is 
bending to send in a salutation of light, peace and 
glory. But the size of these redwood trees, their num- 
ber, their grandeur, their immovably rooted bases, their 
beauty, their litheness, their remarkable straightness — 
none, nor all of these are anything like so impressive 
as their age. They are nine hundred to fifteen hun- 
dred years old. Here are trees standing, not in ruins, 
nor even in the senility, loss of strength and color of 
age, but with intense exhibition of almost immortal 
strength, spanning and bridging past centuries. Holy 
men of old walked, it is said, with God; these trees 
have stood with and worshipped before him, while al- 
most countless generations have come, gone, and passed 
away. Age and strength, age and beaut}', age and 
straightness, age and flexibility, here stand hand in 
hand, harmonizing the apparently irreconcilable, mak- 
ing apparent impossibilities possible and natural. 
Think of single trees yielding fifty thousand feet of 
redwood, and single acres of land yielding one million 



T42 THEIR WONDERFUL YIELD. 

feet of lumber. Indeed, in a radius of one hundred 
and fifty feet, we in one place counted sixty trees, some 
of them three hundred feet high, and with a circum- 
ference of sixty feet two or three feet from the ground. 
All of the trees there are large. The acre of land on 
which those trees stood would yield much more than 
one million feet of lumber, or say enough to load four 
of the largest three-masted schooners. The size, qual 
ity, and grandeur of the redwood trees of California 
and the extent of the redwood forests, have been the 
theme of many writers, and the admiration and won 
der of the lovers of nature, until their fame is world 
wide. But a slight conception can be had of their size 
and height until they are seen. All accounts seem fabu 
lous until one stands amidst a forest of these monsters 
stands at the base of a tree sixteen feet in diameter 
and four hundred feet in height, straight as an arrow, 
covered with massive layers of bark twelve to twenty 
inches thick." The first time I looked upon these won- 
ders was when journeying from the Trinity River to 
Humboldt Bay. When I came down among them, I 
was actually spellbound, as I gazed upon their huge, 
shapely columns planted thickly about me and seem- 
ingly shooting up to the very skies. Of course, though 
their life is reckoned by the roll of centuries, yet they 
have their appointed cycle of years; and it is truly sad 
to contemplate their majestic f(M-ms, older possibly 
than the Sermon on the Mount, lying prostrate upon 
mother eartli. Some of these have trees larger than 
a man's bod}' perched upon their trunks ; growths whose 
root-libres have found sustenance in the immense bark, 



D >• 

>• H 
. 71 

:> 











144 HOMEWARD BOUND. 

and thus worked their wa}^ down into the soil. These 
giants seem to lose their footing more frequently after 
the close of a storm than during its progress. Our 
logging cabin was located in the midst of a section of 
these forests, and I often, at such times, lay in my 
bunk of nights, as here and there one after another 
of these mighty chiefs of the forest lost their hold and 
came tumbling to the earth, resounding as if each had 
brought down with it the thunders of heaven in its 
death-agonies. A section of one was cut at Humboldt 
Bay, twenty-five feet in diameter, to be exhibited at 
the Crystal Palace Exposition, New York, in 1854; 
but no vessel that entered the bay had the space to re- 
ceive it, so that it was not shipped. This section was 
solid except a space of about a foot in diameter in the 
centre. Another, thirt3'-three feet through, stood on 
the pack-trail between the bay and the Klamath River. 
This was hollow and was used by packers as camping 
quarters. 

In April, 1854, 1 took passage on the schooner "Sier- 
ra Nevada" for San Francisco; and, on May i6th, I 
sailed for New York, via the Nicaragua route, taking 
the steamer "Brother Jonathan" on the Pacific side, 
and the steamer "Star of the West" on the Atlantic 
side. Both vessels became historic afterward. The 
one was lost on the Oregon coast with all on board, 
and the other ran the gantlet of the Confederate guns 
in Charleston harbor, when sent b}' the Government 
to relieve Fort Sumter at the outbreak of the Rebel- 
lion. The voyage could scarcely haxe been more 
pleasant — tine weather, no accidents, no sickness, no 



MARVELLOUS PLUCK AND ENTERPRISE. 1 45 

deaths, good fare, accommodatinii; officers, and agree- 
able passengers. Distance from San Francisco, five 
thousand five hundred miles; time, twenty-three days; 
making, altogether, a journey of over ten thousand 
miles and an experience of five years and four months. 
I may now be permitted a few concluding reflec- 
tions. The subjects of this narrative — the California 
Argonauts — present a truly interesting spectacle in 
history. In 1849, forty-two thousand of their number 
reached the gold fields bv land and thirty-ti\e thou- 
sand by sea. In 1850, the rush hither was still greater, 
and the stream continued to flow in year after year 
with little abatement. From a population of perhaps 
thirty-five thousand before this tide set in, the number 
within four years swelled to three hundred thousand; 
and within the same period more than two hundred 
and sixty million dollars of gold was dug from the 
mines. This tide of humanity rushing hitherward 
and overrunning those mountain wilds can be likened 
only to those mighty race-waves that in ancient times 
swept over from beyond the Euxine and overran the 
Continent of Europe. In the present instance, nearly 
every race and clime of the globe was represented; 
yet the sturdy American type dominated all others, 
and impressed its character and its institutions upon 
the land. These Argonauts were for the most part un- 
der middle-age, and the degree of pluck and energy 
they displayed in this novel field has probably never 
been paralleled. They explored difficult and danger- 
ous mountain recesses ; upturned gulches and canyons ; 
washed away flats and bars; turned rivers from their 



1^6 TRULY A UNIQUE LAND. 

beds; tunneled mountains; sluieed away hundreds of 
miles of earth; built up towns and eities; developed 
agriculture; established courts of justice; set up and 
put in motion a state government wholl}- within them- 
selves; and, in a word, gave an impetus to human prog- 
ress throughout the globe to an extent never before 
equalled in the same period of time since the dawn of 
human history. 

The Golden State itself is truly a unique land with 
a unique history. Widely isolated as it is betwixt 
desert and ocean from the great hives of humanity, it 
is a world of itself, and has built up a civilization in 
large measure peculiarl}' its own: 

"With high face held to her ultimate star, 

With swift feet set to her mountains of gold, 
This new-built world, where the wonders are. 
She has built new ways from the ways of old." 

Yet it is not a world without its drawbacks. To me^ 
surely, it did not afford an unceasing round of pleas- 
ure. Still, to me, as to most others that have once 
known and felt its peculiar fascinations, its mountains 
and valleys, its forests and streams, its fruits and flow- 
ers, its scenes and associations, are instinct with a ro- 
mance, a charm, an indescribable something, that ling- 
ers in the memory like a fairy dream, and which time, 
nor distance, nor aught else, can ever lessen or efface. 



APPENDIX. 



My Plains Companions.— Donahue I have never seen or heard 
of since we separated on the plains. Good died of blood poison on 
Carson River in 1853, when on his second trip across the plains to 
California. Earl and Neal never returned to the States. Earl still 
resides in California, where he married and has reared a large fam- 
ily. Neal died in 1883 at Shasta, near the scene of our first mining 
experiences. Rockhill has from the first been following the for- 
tunes of a mining life, and like most men in that calling has done 
much rambling, being familiar with about every important mining 
camp in the Rocky Mountains and beyond. He has been a resident 
of White Pine County, Nevada, for nearly thirty years, and has 
served that constituency acceptably in both branches of the Legis- 
lature. 

Postal Facilities —I received my first letter from home at 
Reading's Bar, on the Trinity,, after an absence of two and a half 
years It cost me two and a half dollars, and I considered it very 
cheap at that. Our nearest post office was at Sacramento. The 
method of obtaining mail from there was by private enterprise, and 
was without pretense of system or regularity. Some man would oc- 
casionally, as caprice happened to move him, procure a list of the 
names of persons at a certain camp t|r camps and make the trip to 
Sacramento, upon the stipulation that he receive a certain stated 
fee for each mail package delivered, two to three dollars being the 
usual charge. 

A Floral Paradise.— A local authority [Hittell, "History of Cal- 
fornia,"] thus speaks of this striking feature of a California land- 
scape: "There are grasses of various kinds and flowers in almost 
unlimited number, including the golden poppies, buttercups, mal- 
lows, pinks, nemophilas, roses, violets, larkspurs, and lilies without 
end. The grass starts and the hills and v.illeys grow green, soon 
after the first rains, in November and December: in February and 
March the flowers commence; at one time the prevailing hue is 
golden, at another yellow, at another blue, and at another purple, 
9.ccording to the predominance of the blooms, and one tint or ano- 



II. DIGGKRS HARVESTING FOOD— CACHING GOLD DUST. 

ther or a variety covers the plains and clothes the hills to their very 
summits." I chanced to be favored with an opportunity for ob- 
serving this feature when probably at its best. It was in April, 
1850, in the rolling oak openings westward of Hangtown, where I 
had gone in search of a horse that my partner and I had turned 
out to graze. The unusually copious rains of the preceding winter 
had been exceedingly favorable for the growth of herbage; and the 
section, being especially adapted for the purpose, now presented the 
aspect of a continuous meadow richly adorned with many species of 
variously colored and brilliant flowers. The billowy sweep of the 
land; the scattering, orchard-like oaks; the genial sky; the wealth 
of waving grasses and flowers; the playing«of perfume-laden zephyrs; 
the shadows of fleecy cloudlets chasing each other across the land- 
scape — such was the prospect as I beheld it. which in charm and 
gorgeousness of effect surely no artistic creation could equal, much 
less excel. 

Diggers Harvesting Food.— Quite to the contrary from the 
foregoing was the further spectacle presented to my senses on the 
same occasion. My attention was attracted by a number of squaws 
and children in a gentle sag among the rank herbage, and on ap- 
proaching them I found that each had the typical burden basket, 
and was busily engaged in harvesting their annual crop of worms. 
These worms were mounted on the stems of the herbage, and were 
large and plump, very much resembling the tobacco variety. The 
process of gathering was to pluck the delicate morsel with the fin- 
gers, take one end in the teeth, and strip out the insides, and repeat 
the process till a number were thus treated, when the bunch would 
be twisted into a sort of knot and cast into a basket. This product, 
I learned, was mixed with pulverized acorns, and used for food. It 
is to be observed in this connection that the Digger was necessarily 
more the creation of circumstances than his civilized brother. 
Knowing nothing of the arts of agriculture, and having little, if 
any, traffic outside of his tribe, he was compelled to draw his sub- 
sistence from such local bounties as nature supplies, whether good 
or bad, generous or otherwise. If his lot fell along the bays and in- 
lets, his chief dependence was upon shell-fish; if along streams, up- 
on the finny tribes: and if inland or upon the desert, anything ob- 
tainable, including the most loathsome insects and vermin. 

Caching Gold Dust. — There were no vaults or even safes in the 
mining camps in those days, and the inconvenience, to say nothing 
of the insecurity, of lugging gold dust aV)out on the person, induced 
the miners frequently to resort to the cache as the most available 
substitute for those conveniences. This practice led to many curious 
experiences. In one instance, two men were on their way from a 



CACHING GOLD DUST — THREE-CARD MONTE. III. 

mining camp to Sacramento, when at a certain point one of them 
stopped suddenly by a conspicuous tree near the road, which also 
had a conspicuous limb pointing toward the ground. The man be- 
gan to excavate with his mining-knife at the spot indicated by the 
pointer, and drew out two junk-bottles full of gold. One day, two 
strangers called at the only cabin on Reading's Bar — a small, rude 
round-log structure, covered with hides. It had been abandoned 
by its original owner or owners, and after that had many tempo- 
rary occupants in the constant shiftings incident to mining life. It 
was now occupied as a trading-post, and the strangers by permis- 
sion proceeded to remove a little earth in one corner, under the raw- 
hide bunk, and exhumed an oyster-can filled with gold dust. At 
another time, two men had started from the bar for the States, and 
had gone about thirty miles on their way, when it occurred to them 
that they had forgotten their gold-cache. Sometimes the cache 
could not be readily found, when much nerve-force and perspiration 
would be expended in the search. I acknowledge having had one 
such experience myself. In another instance, a man, one of our 
messmates, had buried his gold dust in a buckskin purse, which the 
squirrels dug out and dragged up the m(»untain side, strewing the 
contents along their trail for several hundred feet Not more than 
half of tht gold dust was recovered, while the purse itself was nev- 
er found 

Three-Card Monte.— The first I saw of this most artful device 
of all for baiting "suckers" was atPlacerviUe in 1850, after the first 
arrivals from across the plains. One evening, I was a spectator at 
Cold Springs, a neighboring camp, when the game was being dealt. 
A big crowd were around the table, among whom were four broth- 
ers, home acquaintances of mine, who were noted for their close- 
fisted, scrimping habits. The dealer aft'ected utter recklessness in 
flinging the cards, and it frequently appeared as if the "winning 
card"' could be pointed out with absolute certainty. The four broth- 
ers eyed the process with the keenest interest. The junior, a lad 
well in his teens, was made the custodian of the company's purse, 
which contained several hundred dollars in gold dust. At a certain 
deal, when one of those seeming "dead-open-and-shuts'' appeared, 
the lad, nudged by one of the older brothers, clapped the purse on 
the card. But the gambler, feigning surprise and embarrass- 
ment, brusquely pushed the purse away, at the same time averring 
that he took "no bets from old men, children, or fools." At this, an 
older brother interposed and assumed the responsibility. "Well, 
but I have two chances to win to your one," persisted the man with 
the cards. "And that's the wrong card anyway." This pretended 
reluctance to accept the wager had the desired effect, making the 



IV. I-AX ELECTION METHODS— A QUEER CONCEIT. 

dupes only the more eager and confident. The upshot was: the lad 
was handed a pointed stick with which to turn the card over. 
So over it went, and away went the purse and all. The gambler 
drew in the spoil, and with the utmost nonchalance began throwing 
the cards for a fresh deal as if nothing had happened — "the queen, 
the queen; the queen's the winning card; bet your dust on the 
queen." This incident is related simply as an illustration of spec- 
tacles at the gaming-table that became so common as scarcely to 
excite remark. 

Lax Election Methods.— I cast my first vote at Placerville, at 
the first election held in California after the division of the State 
into counties.' I lacked three years of the age required by the 
constitution; but this was accounted no bar at this precinct at this 
election, the board ruling that every one that had been able to 
make his way to the country and shift for himself after his arrival 
ought to be allowed to vote. There was a spirited contest waging 
between Placerville and Coloma for the seat of justice, 2 and the un- 
charitably inclined might have suspicioned that this fact had some- 
thing to do with determining the liberal views of the board. I vot- 
ed also, and served as a clerk of the election board, the next year, 
at Reading's Bar, at the first election held in Trinity County."^ The 
board here was:^ sworn in by one Bradley, whose only qualification 
for administering an oath was that once upon a time he had been a 
Justice of the Peace in the State of Mississippi. Here, as at Pla- 
cerville, the polls were thrown open wide to everybody. The coun- 
ty seat question was also in issue at this election, Weaverville and 
Eureka being the principal contestants. Weaverville gave the bar 
no attention, while a representative of Eureka, C S. Ricks, ap- 
peared among us and arranged for the opening of a polling-place, 
the result being that Eureka was honored with nearly every vote of 
the precinct. One precinct, "Syiumes' Hole," which returned a tally- 
sheet with seventy-five names, was proved to be an outright forgery; 
and, generally, so much irregularity appeared that a new election 
was ordered. The same disregard of formality obtained elsewhere 
in the State. Good avowed that on going down the Sacramento 
Valley on an election day with his pack-train, he and his men were 
solicited to vote and did vote at every precinct they came to. 

A Queer Conceit.— Local prejudice was a very conspicuous trait 
of the isolated communities of the gold regions, where the new- 
comers were regarded with about the same sort of irreverence as 



1 Held on the first Monday in April, 1850. 

2 I'lacerville won, the camp having meantime changed its name from Hang- 
town to the less suggestive and more euphoneous appellation adopted. 

.3 Held on the first Monday in June, 1851. 



A QUEER CONCEIT— LAW AND ORDER. V. 

old Jack Tar accords the land-lubber. They were dubbed "emi- 
grants" as a distinguishing mark from the older inhabitants who 
assumed blue blood because of their prior occupancy. The knight 
of the ante-gOld period, he of the sombrero, huge spurs, serape. etc., 
looked with no less commisseration, if not disdain, upon the arrivals 
of '49 than did these in turn upon the arrivals of '50. The prepos- 
session was not confined merely to the Coast, but followed upon the 
discovery and opening up of new camps everywhere. In later times, 
"pilgrim,"' "tenderfoot," and "stinkfoot" were indifferently substi- 
tuted for "emigrant" as epithets of derision, especially in the Rocky 
Mountains, in the sixties, when the great tidal wave of veteran 
gold-hunters swept over from the Coast and here dashed against an 
equally' formidable wave of "greenhorn" gold- hunters rushing hith- 
er from the States. Mark Twain, in his "Roughing It," has deline- 
ated some of his initiatory observations and experiences in this 
regard. After depicting how he had served as the butt of the street 
gamin, the boot-black, the half-breed, the stage-driver, the "bull- 
whacker," and other like choice spirits of the select for the con- 
doneless offense of being an "emigrant," he is moved to expatiate 
as follows: "Perhaps the reader has visited Utah, Nevada, or Cali- 
fornia, even in these latter days, and while communing with him- 
self upon the sorrowful banishment of those countries from what 
he considers 'the world,' he has had his wings clipped in finding 
that he is the one to be pitied, and that there are entire popula- 
tions around him ready and willing to do it for him — yea, who are 
doing it complacently for him already, wherever he steps his foot. 
Poor thing, they are making fun of his hat; and the cut of his New 
York coat; and his conscientiousness about his grammar; and his 
feeble profanity; and his consumingly ludicrous ignorance of ores, 
shafts, tunnels, and other things which he never saw before, and 
never felt enough interest in to read about. And all the time he 
is thinking about what a sad fate it is to be exiled to that far coun- 
try, that lonely land, the citizens around him are looking down upon 
him with a blighting compassion because he is an 'emigrant' instead 
of that proudest and blessedest creature that exists on all the face 
of the earth, a Forty-Ninek." Of course, the advent of the rail- 
road, that greatest of levelers, has done much toward softening 
down and rooting out this inordinate conceit, a relic of the barbar- 
ous ages. 

Law and Order.— We have heard much of the pistol and the 
bowie-knife in connection with the early mining camps. Those com- 
munities were certainly in a very chaotic state, and as the inhab- 
itants were constantly changing, there were few of those restraints 
operating that come of social stability and settled neighborship. 



VI. LAW AND ORDER. 

At first there was a total absence of technical law, and if there had 
been any such instrumentality there would have been no adequate 
machinery for its enforcement. Gambling was everywhere rife; 
the "social evil" was unrestrained and unblushing; and Sabbath 
desecration was well-nigh universal; yet, for all that, I doubt if 
men were ever anywhere more scrupulous in the meeting of their 
business obligations. The following instances may be cited as typ- 
ical: C M. Long, of the firm of Pickard& Long, general merchants, 
Eureka, California, informed me that during the several years that 
they had done business at that point, (and they were the principal 
merchants there,) they had credited everybody that had asked for 
it, and that the total of their losses on this account was but eight 
dollars. On board the vessel from Eureka to San Francisco, when 
I was en route for the States, I loaned an acquaintance, an ex-sail- 
or, a '"slug."! On our arrival at San Francisco, he went his way and 
I went mine. But, in a day or two, he called and paid me. On the 
same trip, I loaned another friend, one McLane, a hundred dollars. 
I did not see him again after our arrival till the steamer on which 
I was to sail was about to swing out from the wharf, when he came 
panting from nervousness and exhaustion, and handed me the mon- 
ey, explaining that he had been thus delayed in making collections, 
and evincing the utmost concern as to his honor in the premises. 
That these men paid me was entirely optional and voluntary on 
their part. They had no place of permanent residence, and prac- 
tically nothing but non-attachable personal effects. Moreover, each 
had good reason to believe that my departure, already fixed upon, 
would in effect liquidate the debt, and, as a matter of fact, I have 
never seen or heard of either of them since. Now as to felonies in 
any of the ( amps where I was located during the period that I per- 
sonally knew them: I can recall but a single instance of larceny: 
that at Coloma, where the thief paid the penalty at the whipping- 
post, mention of which has been made on pages 94 and 95 of the text. 
And I knew of the commission of but one capital offense where 
whites only were concerned, and that ,was one of murder and rob- 
bery, at Eureka, in 1852. Two men were hanged for the crime, one 
of whom voluntarily made a clean breast of his guilt and implicated 
the other. They were both tried by a people's court, which, under 
the circumstances, was the only expedient practicable. The organ- 
ization of this imi)rovised tribunal, and the proceedure of the trial, 
were entered into with the utmost gravity and deliberation possible; 
but in spite of all precautions the excitement inseparable from such 
an event finally overcame the crowd, and the trial of the last of the 

1 An octagonal fifty-dollar gold piece, minted by private enterprise, and 
quite current as money in those days. 



THE DIGGERS AND THE WHITES. Vll. 

accused, who stoutly protested his innocence, and ag'ainst whom 
there was no evidence except that of the self-convicted criminal, 
deffenerated into a shameful farce. That it did so, however, was, 
I am convinced, the fault of the method and not of the intent, tem- 
perament, or moral obliquity of the actors in the atfair. The same 
outcome mi<:jht have ha]:'pened anywhere, however laudable the in- 
tent: so that we here have a most forceful argument against resort- 
ing' to such means where it is possible for the law to pursue its regu- 
lar course. Speaking generally, I must say that, during an experi- 
ence of about ten years in California and Montana, when society 
was in its most chaotic state, and the machinery of the law was well- 
nigh wholly wanting, I never personally witnessed a shooting or a 
stabbing affray. Nor did I ever go armed myself; and in going about 
in those regions, whether by day or by night, I felt not a whit more 
apprehensive as to my person or property than I would today at 
high noon in the lobby of the Palmer House, in Chicago. 

The Diggers and the Whites.— The Digger aptitude for thiev- 
ing was proverbial. This aptitude, especially among the mountain 
tribes, disclosed itself most in horse-stealing, in the pursuit of which 
marked boldness and dexterity were displayed. One instance was 
related where the lariat was cut and the horse taken when the 
picket end of the line was lashed to the owner himself. Good tells, 
in a letter now before me, how, on the Upper Sacramento River, in 
1851, the Diggers ran oft' ten of his best pack-animals, seven of which 
he was unable to recover, though he pursued the thieves some forty 
miles, and several times had a brush with them. The robbing of 
the corral on the Trinity has already been noticed. Edwin Bryant, 
writing in 1847,1 asserts, upon what he considered trustworthy au- 
thority, that within the twenty years previous, the Indians had 
stolen from the settlements between Monterey and San Francisco, 
a total of two hundred thousand horses, one half of which number 
could be distinctly enumerated. Nearly all these horses, he adds, 
were slaughtered and eaten, the mountain Indians, who chiefly did 
the mischief, having become so habituated to horseflesh that it was 
their principal means of subsistence. We learii on the same au- 
thority that the first Indian horse-thief known to that region, set 
out on his predatory career from Santa Clara, in about 1827, and 
that from this point and this source the evil spread north and south 
as fast as the extension of the settlements made such depredations 
possible. As to the taking of life, however, it may well be doubted 
whether the Digger instinct was so inclined, when not actuated by 
motives of cupidity or of revenge. Fremont had difficulty with the 



1 See his "What 1 Saw in California," New York, 184.8. 



VIII. ATROCIOUS MASSACRE i3Y WHITES. 

Indians near Klamath Lake, in 1846, being on one occasion surprised 
by them at nij^ht and a quarter of his force killed or wounded. But 
I heard of no troubles of this nature taking place anywhere in the 
country during the first three years succeeding the gold discovery. 
In the Sacramento Valley, in the central and southern mines, and 
at Humboldt Bay, (except in the single instance mentioned else- 
where) there was no trouble whatever and no apprehension of trou- 
ble as to Indian depredations, and the two races intermingled one 
with the other upon the best of terms. The Indians often came 
about our logging cabin, near Eureka, and sometimes a half dozen 
or more of them would bunk for the night upon the floor. It was 
astonishing to see how many of them could huddle under a single 
blanket. A number of the squaws became the wives of white men. 
But this friendly disposition on the part of the one race was not 
always reciprocated by the members of the other race. We have 
seen where, without a shadow of real provocation, a rancheria near 
Uniontown was attacked, destroyed, and a number of the occupants 
shot down. That the whites, in this instance, labored under a mis- 
apprehension, did not in the least atone to the sufferers for the mis- 
chief wrought. In another case, at Humboldt Bay, a large part of 
the lower lip and of the lower jaw of a middle-aged buck was shot 
off. The man who was currently understood to have committed the 
deed had no other pretext for so doing than that the Indians, at a 
point about a hundred and fifty miles away, had, some months be- 
fore, killed his brother and run off a large band of cattle that be- 
longed to the two. The surviving brother became so wrought up 
over this outrage that he vowed vengeance upon every Digger he 
should meet, and this buck was thus made to suffer for something 
of which he most probably had never even heard. Again: a log- 
ger's cabin near Eureka was rifled of some bedding and other traps. 
Some of the stuff' was found shortly afterward in possession of an 
Indian at a little rancheria in Eureka. A pistol-shot finished the 
Indian and the guilt was avenged. Nothing was done, or tried to 
be done, with the offending white men in either of these cases. But 
the crowning scene in the drama occurred one night in 1860, when 
an unknown party, evidently whites, attacked a rancheria on In- 
dian Island, almost within a stone's throw of the business portion of 
the city of Eureka. Not a man, woman, or child, save two or three 
that fled, was spared. Knives and hatchets or axes were from 
appearances the instruments principally used. On the same night 
similar attacks were made at several other points on the bay. Al- 
together, the number slain on that fateful night — bucks, squaws, 
and children — did not fall much short of one hundred and fifty. 
Within a few days, and apparently as a part of the same precon- 



DIGGERS NATURALLY PEACEABLE. IX. 

certed plot, several rancherias in other sections of the county were 
visited with similar summary treatment. In no case, apparently, 
was resistance offered or resistance possible. The victims were tak- 
en unawares, and the work was massacre, simple and complete. 
Ag^ain, the law and humanity went unvindicated.i The object, 
doubtlessly, was extermination, and the object was well-nigh ac- 
complished. In revisiting that section in 1884, I saw no Indians 
about the bay, except at Areata, where I did see a remnant of 
them, apparently several families, quartered in the hollow of a 
redwood stump, the internal capacity of which had been somewhat 
enlarged by the action of fire. I also saw a dozen or so of the race 
up in the Bald Hills, about fifty miles back from the bay. Born 
and grown up in this locality, they had been dispossessed of their 
lands by the Government, without compensation, and by order of 
the same authority removed to a reservation in another section. 
But, obviously, to the red man, no less than to the white, 

"Dear is the shed to which his soul conforms, 
And dear the hill that lifts him to the storm. 
And as a child, when scaring sounds molest. 
Clings close and closer to the mother's breast; 
So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar, 
But bind him to his native mountains more." 

This fragment of the race would not remain on the reservation, 
but returned to their "native mountains." Here, they were now re- 
garded as trespassers, and were compelled to pay for the little na- 
tive pasture upon which their few ponies subsisted, while they 
themselves eked out an existence as best they could, chiefly by 
means of such odd jobs as the whites might see fit to give them. 
Several of the women were the deserted wives of white men, and 
were now struggling for a living for themselves and children by 
making baskets and other wicker work. So competent and trust- 
worthy an authority as the late John Ross Brown, in speaking of 
the troubles bj- which the Indians of the Humboldt region became 
reduced to such an extremity, says: "I am satisfied, from an ac- 
quaintance of eleven years with the Indians, that, had the least 
care been taken of them, these disgraceful massacres would never 
have occurred. A more inoffensive and harmless race of beings 
does not exist on the face of the earth; but whenever they attempt- 
ed to proeure a subsistence they were hunted down; driven from the 
reservations from the instinct of self-preservation; shot down by 
the settlers upon the most frivolous pretexts; and abandoned to 

1 The affair occupied the attention of the grand jury, which, after severely 
condemning the butchery, dismissed the case upon the alleged ground that no 
clue could be obtained as to the identity of the perpetrators. For further de- 
tails of this atrocity see "History of Humboldt County," San Francisco, 1882. 



X. EARLY CALIFORNIA PRICES CURRENT. 

their fate by the only power that could afford them protection." 
The characterization, "inoffensive and harmless," can hardly be ap- 
plied to the mountain tribes of Northeastern California, though 
possibly it might in the first instance. 

Early California Prices Current.— Dqlano's "Life on the 
Plains and at the Diggings," gives the following as the prices paid 
at Lassen's Ranch, on September 17, 1849: 

Flour, per 100 pounds $ 50.00 

Fresh beef, per 100 pounds 35.00 

Pork, " " " 75.00 

Sugar, " " " 50.00 

Cheese, per pound 1.50 

H. A. Harrison, in a letter to the "Baltimore Clipper," dated 
San Francisco, February 3, 1849, gives the following price-list: 

Beef, per quarter $20.00 

Fresh Pork, per pound .25 

Butter, per pound 1.00 

Cheese, per pound 1.00 

Ham, per pound 1.00 

Flour, per barrel 18.00 

Pork, per barrel $35 to 40.00 

Coffee, per pound .16 

Rice, per pound .10 

Teas, per pound 60 cents to 1.00 

Board, per week 12.00 

Labor, per day $6 to 10.00 

Wood, per cord 20.00 

Brick, per thousand $50 to 80.00 

Lumber, per thousand 150.00 

William D. Wilson, writing to the "St. Joseph Valley Register," 
on February 21, 1849, gives the following scliedule of prices at Sut- 
ter's Fort: 

Flour, per barrel $ -SO to $40.00 

Salt Pork, per barrel 110 to 150.00 

Salt Beef, " / 45 to 75 00 

Molasses, '• 30 to 40.O0 

Salt Salmon, " 40 to 50.00 

Beans, per pound .20 

Potatoes, " "14 

Coffee, " 20 cents to ,33 

Sugar, " 20 cents to .30 

Rice, " 20 cents to ,30 

Boots, per pair $20 to 25 00 

Shoes, •' 3 to 12.00 

Blankets, " 40 to 100 00 

Transportation by river from San Francisco to Sacramento, he 
says, was $6 per one hundred pounds. From Sacramento to the mines 
by team at the rate of $10 for every twenty-live miles. 



PRICES CURRENT— THE GRIZZLY BEAR. XI. 

John H. Miller, writing to the "St. Joseph Valley ileg-ister," Oc- 
tober 6, 1849, <jivesthe foUowinjj prices at Weberville, HO miles from 
Sacramento: 

Wagons $+0 to $80 OO 

Oxen, per yoke oO to 150.00 

Mules, each 90 to 150.00 

Board, per meal, $1 50, or per week 21.00 

Beef, per pound 40 cents to .75 

Salt Pork, per pound 40 cents to .75 

Flour, per pound 25 cents to .30 

Sugar, per pound 30 cents to .50 

Molasses, per gallon $2 to 4.00 

Mining Cradles $20 to 6O.00 

Mining Pans $4 to 8.00 

[After the rainy season set in. the roads to the mines became ex- 
tremely heavy, and the rate of transportation for the same distance 
during the most of the winter was $1 per pound, which on the aver- 
age increased the prices here given more than 100 per cent. — Au- 
thor.] 

The Grizzly Bear. — This ponderous and redoubtable beast, per- 
haps the most formidable animal on the continent, figures with 
much prominence in early California. Its image was emblazoned 
on the flag under which the non-Spanish residents of that country 
first revolted against the Mexican rule, and today the same image 
occupies a place quiescently beside the traditional goddess on the 
chosen arms of the State. The grizzlies were very numerous on the 
Coast, even down to my time there, especially in the lower valleys in 
the season of berries. Their feats were a staple theme of the cur- 
rent every-day conversation. Along the Sacramento River, in the 
fall, wild grapes were abundant, which attracted many of the spe- 
cies from the mountains bordering the valley. As we were going 
up the river, in the fall of 1850, I inquired of a Missourian, who, 
with his wife, was keeping a sort of station by the roadside, wheth- 
er there were many grizzlies thereabouts. "Oh, yes:" he ejaculat- 
ed, "a right smart sprinkle of "em." Then he went on to relate in 
his peculiar vernacular how, the night previous, one had come pok- 
ing his nose under the edge of the tent where he and his wife were 
abed; how he had lighted a match to the bear's nose; and how the 
bear, at the smell of the sulphur, had scampered oft" in a fright. 
The grizzlies were also very plentiful about Humboldt Bay. The 
underbrush here was extraordinarily thick and tangled, and bore 
berries in great profusion and variety. In the proper season, the 
tops of these berry-bearing bushes were everywhere bent down or 
broken oft' by the grizzlies in their clawing after the fruit. During 
one summer, we were every morning regaled with the sight of the 



Xli. ENCOUNTERING A GROUP OF GRIZZLIES. 

huge footprints of one of these monsters, where, the night before, 
he had deliberately waddled along on our cattle-trail, over which 
we were compelled to pass back and forth at least once every work- 
ing day of the week. We did not put ourselves out of the way to 
seek a closer acquaintance with "Old Ephraim" himself. As a rule, 
he was given a wide berth, by professional hunters, as well as oth- 
ers. Once, a friendi and myself, in crossing over from Eel Eiiver to 
the bay, came upon five of the beasts on the trail a short distance 
ahead of us. When they espied us, several of them reared up on 
their haunches, "sized us up" a moment, and then, resuming their 
all-fours, they all contemptuously swaggered off about their busi- 
ness. We, with becoming grace, brooked the insult and allowed 
them to go their way. The grizzly was not considered dangerous, 
except when it was wounded or was come upon in close quarters 
unawares. Roosevelt, in his hunting-books, mentions several in- 
stances where, in the Rocky Mountains, men were killed at a blow 
of their paws; but, while I heard of a number of cases in California 
where persons were badly mutilated in their clutches, I never heard 
of a person there being killed by them outright. The worst case of 
mutilation that came to my knowledge was that of oneL. K. Wood. 
This man was a member of a party that, in their wanderings in the 
fall of 1849, discovered Humboldt Bay, and they were in the moun- 
tains south of Eel River when the encounter took place. 2 With 
winter at hand, strength reduced, health impaired, provisions ex- 
hausted, and ammunition nearly run out, they were trying to work 
their way to the settlements, some three hundred miles away. The 
original party had disagreed and separated, the one to which Wood 
belonged now consisting of three men besides himself, — Thomas Se- 
bring, Isaac Wilson, and David A. Buck. Entering a patch of 
mountain prairie, in the section mentioned, they came upon a group 
of eight grizzlies, and, though the men were so exhausted that they 
could hardly drag themselves along, yet they determined to attack 
the grim customers. When Wood was within about fifty steps, he 
leveled his rifle upon the one nearest him and fired. The bear 
tumbled over, biting and tearing the earth with all the fury of one 
struggling in the agony of death. Wilson, at the same time, dis- 

1 This friend, whose name was Head, was, in one respect, peculiarly consti- 
tuted. The mosquitoes in some places about the bay literally swarmed. I had 
my handkerchief bound about my head and neck, and was kept busy fighting 
the pests, notwithstanding; yet he strode along, evincing the utmost compla- 
cency, protesting that the ravenous tormentors passed him by without so 
much as thinking of molesting his person in anywise. 

2 Wood wrote a graphic account of this affair in 185G, which was reproduced 
in the "History of Humboldt County," to which I am indebted for the details 
here given. 



A DEADLY GRAPPLE. . XIII. 

charg-ed his rifle with telling effect, and now the two bears lay be- 
fore them apparently dead. Five of the group retreated up the 
mountain, but one of those still unhurt cocked itself upon its 
haunches, seeming to deliberate as to the course it should pur- 
sue. Wilson sprang for a tree, seeing which the grizzly made a 
furious dash at Wood who was nearest it. But Wood also succeed- 
ed in reaching a small tree, a buckeye, where with clubbed rifle he 
beat off the attacks of the infuriated beast for a few moments. 
But now, to his utter astonishment, the bear that he supposed he 
had killed, sprang upon its feet and also came bounding toward 
him with all the ferocity that agony and revenge could arouse. 
The first spring the monster made upon the tree broke it down. 
Wood gained his feet and rushed to another small tree, about thirty 
paces away, the wounded bear grabbing at his heels at every 
bound. Grasping the sapling with one hand, he swung around it, 
thus clearing himself from the bear, whose momentum carried it 
headlong down the hill, some twenty paces beyond, before it could 
recover. Wood now, with all the energy of desperation, endeav- 
eord to scale the tree, but before he had ascended more than six 
feet the second bear came up, seized him by the right ankle, and 
dragged him to the ground. At about the same instant the wound- 
ed bear returned and caught him by the shoulder. The other still 
gripped his ankle, and now the two pulled apart, as if to tear their 
victim limb from limb. To use Wood's own words, "my clothes and 
their grip giving way occasionally, saved me. In this way they 
continued until they had stripped me of my clothes, except a part 
of my coat and shirt, dislocated my hip, and inflicted many flesh 
wounds- none of the latter, however, very serious. They seemed 
to be unwilling to take hold of my flesh; for, after they had torn 
the clothes ofl' me, they both left me. The one went entirely awav, 
and the other (the wounded one) walked slowly up the hill, about a 
hundred yards from me, then deliberately seated herself, and fast- 
ened her gaze upon me as I lay upon the ground perfectly still." 
But the first sign of life that came from Wood brought the bear 
back to him pell-mell, roaring at the heighth of her power at 
every jump. Now, poking her nose violently against his side, she 
"raised her head and gave vent to two of the most frightful, 
hideous, and unearthly yells ever heard by mortal man." But 
Wood remaining composed and perfectly still, the bear, after a 
few minutes, again left him, going about a hundred yards away, 
and setting back on her haunches, with eyes full aglare upon him. 
He managed, however, without a renewal of the attack, to drag 
himself back to the buckeye tree, where he had first sought refuge, 
and which, with much difficulty, he succeeded in climbing to a, 



XIV. APPALLING SITUATION— LIST OF ARGONAUTS. 

point about ei<»-ht feet from the j^round. Wilson, now observing 
Wood up the tree, ventured toward him, whereupon the bear again 
made a ferocious charge. Wilson barely saved himself by spring- 
ing uj) a tree near Wood as the bear lunged at him. Now the bear 
seated herself between the two men, keeping her eyes steadily upon 
them, and savagely growling upon either of them making the 
slightest stir. Wood's gun was disabled, and, observing Wilson de- 
liberately drawing a bead upon their implacable antagonist and 
not jHiUing the trigger, he entreated hiin to "Shoot her! for God's 
sake, shoot her! she is the one that caused me all my trouble." But 
Wilson replied, "No sir: let her go— let her go, if she will." And 
pretty .soon she did disappear for good. What Buck and Sebring 
were doing while this exciting scene was enacting. Wood does not 
say, perhaps feeling that since they failed to come to his relief, the 
natural inferences were better left unsaid. Wood came out of the 
encounter so badly disabled that it became a serious question as to 
what should be done in this extremity. There was an Indian ranch- 
eria in the neighborhood, and the chief was besought to care for 
him till his companions could make the settlements and return. 
This dignitary consented, and. after taking as compensation all the 
trinkets and other stuff the party could spare, even to Wood's 
blankets, he turned upon his heels, walked away with the prize, 
and was seen no more. A consultation was now held, somewhat 
aside from Wood, but in the course of which Wood heard Wilson 
exclaim, "No, sir; I will not leave him! I will remain with him, if 
it is alone: or I will i)ack him if he is able to bear the pain." Wood's 
dislocated leg had by this time become much swollen and inflamed, 
and was so sensitive that he could scarcely bear to have it touched. 
But these manly and heroic words of Wilson stirred the sufferer to 
almost superhuman resolution. The upshot was, that Wood was 
lashed upon a mule, carried to the settlements, and his life saved. 
I knew him well afterward. He remained badly crippled all his 
life, requiring the use of canes or crutches. He was the first Clerk 
of Humboldt County, where, near Areata, he died a few years ago, 
ttnd where his children still occupy the old homestead. 

List of St .Toskph County Argonauts.— I have prepared with 
considerable care the following list of the names of residents of St. 
.Joseph County, Indiana, that crossed the plains to California in 
1849. I am indebted for much of the data of this list to contempo- 
raneous files of the "St. .Joseph Valley Register," which were kindlv 
placed at my disposal by Schuyler Colfax, of South Bend, Indiana. 
Those printed in Roman (84) are dead: those in itaUcs{22) are living: 
these in SMALL capitals (6) are missing. In other word.s, about 
three-fourths of this number are dead. This ratio of the dead to 



ST. JOSEPH COUNTY ARGONAUTS. XV. 

the livinfx is probably not far froni correct as applied to the whole 
of the emigration of that year; that is, of the seventy^seven thou- 
sand that entered the f^old fields in 1849, nearly fifty-eight thousand 
tod^iy belon-r on the death-roll 



Allen. Abram Mishawaka 

Armstrong. Simeon.. 

Bertholf, Abram B. . . 

Black, Francis 

Bratt, John Centre 

Bertrand, Charles. . .South Bend 

Busha, George 

Bronson, James C 

Bressett. Lewis 

Baer, Adam 

Crosby. Dr. A. B. . . New Carlisle 

Cutting, Dr.. 

Chapman, Dr. Jared Greene 

Curtis, William Olive 

Caldimll, Cassins South Bend 

Carpenter, Ezra G. . ■ 

Cottrell, Samuel L. . . " 

Coquillard, Jr., A 

Comparet, Louis G. . • i' 

De Groff, G 

Day, .John 

Doan, James 

Donahue, Francis Centre 

DONAHUE, Michael " 

Doolittle, J ames Mishawaka 

Doolittle, Hull J " 

Doolittle, George " 

Eaton, James Olive 

EsLiNGER, Matthias. • Madison 

Earl, William L South Bend 

Fassett, Chauncey S. . 

Ford, Alex. J Mishawaka 

Farley, Joel Penn 

Frazier, Alex. H Olive 

Garwood. Sol 

Garoune,Jere. M. .New Carlisle 

Good, William S German 

Gish, David E South Bend 

Grossnical, Jacob 

Harris, Samuel 



Horrell, Johnson South Bend 

Horrell. James 1 

Henricks, Dr. John A. 
Hopkins, Simeon W.. 
Hartwell, James . . .Mishawaka 

Harris, William Harris 

Johnson, JohnC New Carlisle 

Johnson, Evan C South Bend 

Johnson, Pierce N. . .South Bend 
Johnson, Cyrenius. .. . 

Kinsey, Philip W 

Kelley. John Centre 

Kellev, Mrs. John. 

Lambing, Fred South Bend 

Lewis. Charles W 

Lindsey, Tipton 

Linderman, John 

Leeper, David R 

Labadie, Anthony... 

Miller. William 

Miller, Matthew B... 

Maslin, William 

McCoskry, David 

McNabb, Horton '' 

McCoy, Felix 

Monson, Rev. W. C. 
McCartney, Thomas 
McCartney, James. . . 
McCartney, Benj. F.. 

Miller, John N 

McCullough, Wm. S. 

Merrifield, Geo C Mishawaka 

Mathews, James 

Metzger, Joseph E Harris 

Norton, William. • • South Bend 

Neal. Thomas Dudley Greene 

Needham, John W. -New Carlisle 

Pierce, Charles " 

Phillij)S, Melvin R Penn 

Pierson, George South Bend 



.Liberty 
.German 



.Greene 



XVI. 



ST. JOSEPH COUNTY ARGONAUTS. 



Page, Francis South Bend 

Rush, Hiram 

Rush, Mrs. H. (Sarah). 

Rush, Miss Sarah 

Rush, Miss Ellen 

Reynolds, Ethan S. . .. 
Robinson, ''Col." Abe B. 

Rulo, William 

Rockhill, Thomas Portage 

Rush, D. Clinton. . . .New Carlisle 

Snyder. Joseph Harris 

Sales. Jack and Boy. . Mishawaka 
Stocking, Walter V. . " 

Shuffler, Reuben Oiive 

Spencer, Philo G "' 

Stebbins, George " 



Snavely, William J. .South Bend 

Sherland, Luther " 

Tutt, Charles M " 

Trainor, Daniel " 

Tingley, Simeon D Greene 

Towner, Olive 

Tibbetts, N. B Mishawaka 

Vessey, John South Bend 

Woodward, J. E " 

Whitman, William Q. " 

White, Joseph " 

Woodward. William L. " 
Willoughby, Dr. D. W. C. " 

Wing, A. M Mishawaka 

Wilson, Charles L... " 
Ward, Daniel Clay 




Page 75, line 2 Vjelow picture, for "log" read "adobe." 

For "Donahue" read "Donighue." 

For "Dr. A. B. Crosby" read "Dr. Averill E. Crosby." 

For "John N. Miller" read "John H. Miller," 

For "Col. AVje B. Robinson" read "Col. Abe G. Robinson." 

Linderinan, Lanabing, and Eslinger are still living. 

Towner, Stebbins, and DeGroff went from LaPorte county. 



1 



